The sketchbook project has been a two-fold process for me. I have recorded visually in my sketchbook, alongside collecting images/photographs/research on my blog. I wanted to keep them both separate, because when I work on a project I use my computer all the time to research and record my findings. If I ever do make sketches, they are only really for very quick reference- and do not hold a lot of detail or notes for me to refer to at a later date. However, they can be useful for capturing things on the go.
I feel that this has been working well for me in this project, but it is now time to start bringing everything together to form more cohesive design ideas which could be applied to designs I may make in the future. I will take references from my sketchbook and visual sources I have got on my blog and see what the results are.
I've never done this before, so I will be interested to see the results....
"Mushroom cloud of stone erupts in the Ténéré
desert, remnant of its watery past. This pedestal rock began as a mass
of pebbly sandstone. Its sculptors were cycles of hot and cold, wet and
dry, as well as blowing sand, which caused the sloughing off of shards
scattered at the base."
(Text and photograph from "Journey to the Heart of the Sahara," March 1999, National Geographic magazine)
ANDREA COCHRAN
Landscape Architect
USA
Find out more here: www.acochran.com
AC is one of my all time favorite designers, who combines bold modernist design with natural forms, plants and landscapes to soften hard edges. She is so uncluttered in her designs, and plays with large open areas to make you feel simultaneously within a garden and also within the landscape beyond its boundaries. She is based and does most of her work in San Fransico, and therefore chooses materials and plants that she knows will be enhanced by the light or by reflections of the sky.
In an interview I read with her (on the American Society of Landscape Architects website) she sights these modernist designers + minimalist artists as an influence on her work: Dan Kiley / Garrett Eckbo / James Rose / Robert Irwin / Fred Sandback
This is a nice quote from her, talking about a rooftop garden she created for an affordable housing community:
"The point I started with was that I saw this man up there, he had the
most beautiful broccoli growing in his two by three foot bed, and I
don't know what else was in there, but this broccoli was unbelievably
beautiful. He said I come up here and this is my therapy. I can get my
hands in the dirt. I was almost in tears. I thought it was the most
meaningful thing I'd ever done to just give this guy a chance to just be
outside, be in the sun and work with his hands in the dirt and grow
something in the five foot square plot. I think it's really worked well.
When he's up there working, teenagers come up and hang out. Adults are
up there working on their gardens so the teenagers are being monitored.
It's not a leftover space, isolated, where things can happen. It becomes
this environment that's more of a community, and people kind of watch
out for one another".
