Codify : Parametric and Computational Design in Landscape Architecture

Codify: Parametric and Computational Design in Landscape Architecture provides a series of essays that explore what it means to use, modify and create computational tools in a contemporary design environment. Landscape architecture has a long history of innovation in the areas of computation and media, particularly in how the discipline represents, analyses, and constructs complex systems. This curated volume spans academic and professional projects to form a snapshot of digital practices that aim to show how computation is a tool that goes beyond methods of representation and media. The book is organized in four sections; syntax, perception, employ, and prospective. The essays are written by leading academics and professionals and the sections examine the role of computational tools in landscape architecture through case studies, historical accounts, theoretical arguments, and nascent propositions.

Bradley Cantrell is a landscape architect and scholar whose work focuses on the role of computation and media in environmental and ecological design. He is currently Professor and Chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Virginia School of Architecture and has held academic appointments at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, The Rhode Island School of Design, and the Louisiana State University Robert Reich School of Landscape Architecture. His work in coastal and riverine landscapes form a series of methodologies that develop modes of modeling, simulation, and embedded computation that express and engage the complexity of overlapping physical, cultural, and economic systems.

Adam Mekies is a licensed landscape architect and planner at Design Workshop in Aspen, Colorado, where he leads many of the firm’s computational and interactive technologies in the construction of the public and private realm. He received his Bachelor of Landscape Architecture from Iowa State University, and has applied his interests in advanced construction modeling and computational technology to design projects across the country and overseas. He is the recipient of multiple ASLA design and research awards for his work in community design and implementation of interactive and parametric technologies.