A Three-Dimensional Animation of Ecological Dynamics for the Study of Landscape Design, Civil Engineering and Environmental Science
Kathy Poole, Architecture
1997 TTI Fellow
Email: kap3k@virginia.edu
The truly marvelous thing about ecological systems is that they are creative. They adaptably redefine themselves according to their environements. The problem is that we still lack tools for visualizing, manipulating, and teaching these processes. To date, computer technology can very effectively model the formal qualities of landscapes three-dimensionally, or it can produce quantitative non-visual information. It cannot accomplish these goals simultaneously. A more interrelated and creative computer and pedagogical model is needed.
Professor Pooles project resolves this difficulty by synthesizing empirical ecosystem modeling techniques and three-dimensional graphics using MicroStation 95, a two-dimensional and three-dimensional modeling program, GeoGraphics, GIS software that seamlessly integrates with MicroStation, and GEOPAK Drainage, a civil engineering package that models built hydraulics/hydrology.
The project, involving the classic case study of Bostons Back Bay Fens, offers an extraordinary opportunity to integrate biotic information from the environmental sciences and stormwater practices from civil engineering into the creative, speculative realm of design. Upon reconfiguring the form of the land and its contents (buildings, vegetation, bridges, stormwater structures, etc.), students will immediately see the relationships between aesthetic form and resultant water quantity. But they will be able to do more than insert forms. Students will be able to program the biotic content of the project, which will, in turn, generate form.
As envisioned by Poole, the Three-Dimensional Animation of Ecological Dynamics will be developed by a working colloquium of faculty and students and presented as a freshman/sophomore University Seminar in which each of the collaborating faculty would participate. The class will demonstrate to students early in their careers that the most creative venues are at the edge of bodies of knowledge and within interdisciplinary collaboration.