Paramuka Subdivision
This research project was interested in the conventional techniques of garden design and their background in historic garden theory and practice. This project was also interested in the practice of environmental design, from the regional constraint diagrams of McHarg, to closer scale ecological restoration programming, down to specific revegetation techniques. The project was interested in establishing some kind of technique that could establish a connective strategy between the two practices of garden design making and environmental design. The project was interested in finding a new way of representing and developing these conditions of garden and environmentalism through the GIS software, ArcView. ArcView is not a design tool in the conventional sense, it is a mapping and analysis tool. ArcView offered a way, in broad terms, of decontextualising garden practice from the particular design conventions that surround it, typologies, styles, the social/cultural paraphernalia.
The result of the intersection between site conditions and garden making practice is a complex landscape of horticultural and topographical differentation. Decisions about how this landscape was to be occupied were generated from simple functional association. Housing and associated infrastructure was allocated to the garden terraces. Major infrastructure was placed in the indigenous planting zones. This allocation diagram initially gave rise to a simple experiential dialectic. The user encounters indigenous vegetation and natural contours in their travels through the not- garden zone, terraced topography and exotic horticulture in the garden zones.
The result of the intersection between site conditions and garden making practice is a complex landscape of horticultural and topographical differentation. Decisions about how this landscape was to be occupied were generated from simple functional association. Housing and associated infrastructure was allocated to the garden terraces. Major infrastructure was placed in the indigenous planting zones. This allocation diagram initially gave rise to a simple experiential dialectic. The user encounters indigenous vegetation and natural contours in their travels through the not- garden zone, terraced topography and exotic horticulture in the garden zones.