Talk:Planting Design 2013 - Working Group 26

CASE STUDY A - "Târgului" River, Câmpulung Muscel, Romania by Radu Mircea Giurgiu

Leon Plahuta: The wilderness factor you specified to be as one of the stongest aspects of your chosen site is something that is really visible from your study´s cover photo and it really intrigued me and cought my attention from the very beginning. The contrast between something that is completely human-made (residential areas and the railway lines) and the river that is by itself “wild“ (as you descibed it) is strong and powerful and I can easily see why you fell in love with the site and it´s uniqueness. You also mentioned you worked as a landscpae architect for 2 years and was a part of a lot of projects (parks, public spaces etc.) so you must have seen spaces that are both larger in scale and more representative when confronted, but yet you chose a “simple“ green area by the river which many would not even notice (and sadly don´t). It seems to me your “professional eye“ is well trained and you really do notice the sometimes “forgotten“ everyday landscapes that are very valueble to the society which is really great and I congrat you for that. The changes of the site throughout the history are also very interesting and this is certainly not the only case were nature and it´s values were decreased due to urbanisation and industrialisation progress and processes. Although changed by “artificial interventions“, this site surely has the potential you highlight and can get back the beauty it once had. Changing it to be more human-accessible may be one of the keys of it because this forgotten zone deserves more than being just a pass-by sight for the people living near by. You sketch made the situation even more alive and it can easily be seen (or imagined) how the space could change in 5 or 10 years from now.

CASE STUDY C - The Green River Path of Uppsala, Sweden by John Lööf Green

Leon Plahuta: The thing that intrigued me most about this case study is the politaical and sociological undicisiveness when it comes to the future landscape management of the river Uppsala. What to do and how to behave when the landscape that surrounds us needs improvement on one side, but also protection on the other? Which way to take and what actions need to be done to set a propper assesment of the parts that are still not used in the way the maybe should be? The questions of landscape assesment and evaluation as well as perceivement were popping up in my head when reading this case study which I think has a big potential and a lot of complexity (maybe even more than this on-line seminar can handle). At the end I think you should have maybe said a little bit more about the way you perceive the space and give a suggestion that could maybe also lean to a certain path the Uppsala and it´s surroundings are heading to (according to your evaluations/studies or personal feelings/opinions).

CASE STUDY D - Heath-Moorland, Yorkshire, Peak District National Park by Becca Huggins

Leon Plahuta: I have to admitt this case was interesting because of a lot of things. First of all, the depth and the amount of energy you put into the study has a certain wow-factor by itself. A lot of text, a lot of informations, a lot of photos and sketches, a lot of everything really; and it is displayed so nicely you can easily scroll down and go through it all and not even notice the lenght of the page nor the time you have spent reading it all. Nicely done. The poems were especially a nice touch to the whole thing. You have really tried to bring the look & feel of the space as close to the reader as it can get and succeeded along the way. Also, the hierarchy in which you explained everything is very well put together and one can easily follow your taughts and points you were trying to make. Your landscape & urban context is a pefect example of this (and I really liked the short, but very interesting “ How the Moorland came about“). However, the things I like the most are the natural dynamic versus cultural framework section with the concept map and the highlighted potentials & problems as well as your first analytical sketch where you showed the map with significant points along the route you chose. Here it is clearly visible you put a lot of effort into this task and let yourself think from a lot of different points of view, which is a great thing because it shows you are not afraid to search, look, test and explore various parts of the landscape you chose. I don´t know whether you have some “comfort zones“ when it comes to your current landscape architecture studies and preferences or not, but this study proves and showes that if you do infact have some, you certainly hide them well cause they are not visible here what so ever because every part of your study is done with equal amount of energy and patience devoted to it. The drawings and sketches I simply love because they are not your usual everyday tools of expressing one´s points of view, but something that is really special and unique. In the future, I would maybe ease up with the heavy expressive colors at some parts cause after looking through the whole “Analytical & Projective“ part I got lost at one point and everything looked very similar. Maybe you could stick to one drawing technique at one part and than transfer to another at another part. That way all the things you want to say would be visually even more clear and the reader could also visually distinguish one part from the other even better (eg. using bright color pencils and markers in the analytical part and then collage with darker colors in the projective part or using different colors in the analytical part but only shades of one color with the addition of black & grey parts in the projective one). Hope you understood what I meant. And hey, since you are just finishing your Bs studies, maybe you should also think about making this case study your Final thesis/project. You have more than enough to start and the topic and the way you presented it are more than interesting. All in all, very good work.