Book Review: Grant Jones/Jones – Jones
Grant Jones/Jones – Jones: ILARIS: The Puget Sound Plan edited by Jane Amidon, published by Princeton Architectural Press, 2007. (Amazon)
The latest installment in the Source Books in Landscape Architecture Series, edited by Knowlton School of Architecture's Jane Amidon, is a project on a much larger scale than the Nasher Sculpture Center Garden or the urban projects of Ken Smith, previously reviewed here. The Puget Sound Plan is a regional plan for the aesthetic and natural resources of a large portion of Washington State and therefore a much different sort of landscape project than the three previous books. This helps give the series a broad range that encompasses the realm of landscape architecture today, ranging from the detailed garden to waterways, highways, and forests.
The Puget Sound Plan is the work of Grant Jones of Jones & Jones, a multi-disciplinary practice located in Seattle. This book's title gives almost equal weight to the practitioners and ILARIS (Intrinsic Landscape Aesthetic Resource Information System), an award-winning GIS model "developed to rapidly assess and communicate the intrinsic characteristic landscape forms that define a region’s scenic character, assess the scenic value and cultural heritage of a region, and capture which of these features are most prized by the public." This situation illustrates the double-edge sword of the increasing dependence of architects and planners on technological tools and the unprecedented visualization that comes out of these tools. It's a situation that requires not only someone capable of utilizing the software but someone capable of making quality judgments from the graphical output; for example, a developer may use the output for much different ends than a conservation organization, as pointed out by Amidon. So while the software may give designer and client a greater understanding of what they're dealing with, it must be accompanied by a strong theory (in this case leaning more towards conservation than development) towards the application of the graphical data.
The use of GIS, and in this case ILARIS, once again brings to the fore that need to find a way to resolve the break between plan graphics and on-the-ground experience, where GIS must be accompanied by fieldwork, for example. It's naive to think that one can work without the other -- as Modernism shows that ignoring the user's experience can lead to some miserable environments -- though as tools in one realm and scale consider others, a better-integrated design approach is less a fantasy and more an obtainable reality.
The latest installment in the Source Books in Landscape Architecture Series, edited by Knowlton School of Architecture's Jane Amidon, is a project on a much larger scale than the Nasher Sculpture Center Garden or the urban projects of Ken Smith, previously reviewed here. The Puget Sound Plan is a regional plan for the aesthetic and natural resources of a large portion of Washington State and therefore a much different sort of landscape project than the three previous books. This helps give the series a broad range that encompasses the realm of landscape architecture today, ranging from the detailed garden to waterways, highways, and forests.
The Puget Sound Plan is the work of Grant Jones of Jones & Jones, a multi-disciplinary practice located in Seattle. This book's title gives almost equal weight to the practitioners and ILARIS (Intrinsic Landscape Aesthetic Resource Information System), an award-winning GIS model "developed to rapidly assess and communicate the intrinsic characteristic landscape forms that define a region’s scenic character, assess the scenic value and cultural heritage of a region, and capture which of these features are most prized by the public." This situation illustrates the double-edge sword of the increasing dependence of architects and planners on technological tools and the unprecedented visualization that comes out of these tools. It's a situation that requires not only someone capable of utilizing the software but someone capable of making quality judgments from the graphical output; for example, a developer may use the output for much different ends than a conservation organization, as pointed out by Amidon. So while the software may give designer and client a greater understanding of what they're dealing with, it must be accompanied by a strong theory (in this case leaning more towards conservation than development) towards the application of the graphical data.
The use of GIS, and in this case ILARIS, once again brings to the fore that need to find a way to resolve the break between plan graphics and on-the-ground experience, where GIS must be accompanied by fieldwork, for example. It's naive to think that one can work without the other -- as Modernism shows that ignoring the user's experience can lead to some miserable environments -- though as tools in one realm and scale consider others, a better-integrated design approach is less a fantasy and more an obtainable reality.
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