Dynamic Patterns: Visualizing Landscapes in a Digital Age

Dynamic Patterns explores the role of patterns in designed landscapes. Patterns are inherently relational, and the search for and the creation of patterns are endemic to many scientific and artistic endeavors. Recent advances in optical tools, sensors, and computing have expanded our understanding of patterns as a link between natural and cultural realms.

Looking beyond the surface manifestation of pattern, M’Closkey and VanDerSys delve into a multifaceted examination that explores new avenues for engagement with patterns using digital media. Examining the theoretical implications of pattern-making, they probe the potential of patterns to conjoin landscape’s utilitarian and aesthetic functions.

With full color throughout and over one hundred and twenty images, Dynamic Patterns utilizes work from a wide range of artists and designers to demonstrate how novel modes of visualization have facilitated new ways of seeing patterns and therefore of understanding and designing landscapes.

Karen M’Closkey and Keith VanDerSys are faculty members in the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, USA, and founding partners of PEG office of landscape + architecture, a design and research practice based in Philadelphia, USA. Their firm has received numerous design awards and been widely published for its work exploring fabrication technologies in landscape architecture and, most recently, advances in environmental modeling and simulation tools. They are guest editors of the Fall 2016 issue of LA+ on the topic of simulation. M’Closkey is author of Unearthed: The Landscapes of Hargreaves Associates (2013), which won the J. B. Jackson Book Prize from The Foundation for Landscape Studies. She is a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome and was co-recipient with VanDerSys of a 2013 Pew Fellowship in the Arts.