REVIEWED BY GALE FULTON, ASLA

From the October 2016 Issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine
Warning: possible confirmation bias ahead.
One of the most perplexing aspects of landscape architecture education and practice that I?ve encountered is what I?ll grossly refer to here as representation. In the nearly two decades that I?ve been a student, professional, or involved in some capacity with teaching at the university level, I can think of no other domain as consistently polarizing than the critically important area of how landscape architects generate and communicate their ideas. Perhaps the most pernicious aspect of this issue is the ongoing divide between digital and analog processes?using the computer versus hand drawing. At first glance, one may likely assume this issue to simply be generational?older generations of designers were not educated in the use of the computer and so are less accepting of it than of those techniques and media with which they were trained. But, surprisingly, there seems to be a continued skepticism or distancing from advanced computational processes even by those of the postdigital generations, which is much more troubling given that these will be the future leaders of the discipline, and, as the authors of this book so effectively demonstrate, not embracing the digital in a robust way at this point significantly reduces the potential of the discipline to have the type of impact it aspires to have. Landscape Architecture and Digital Technolo...