About Landscape Architecture

Once we log off for an additional amazing year, we at SoLA we do hope you all possess a Merry Christmas along with a Happy Year. Searching toward 2016!

Before we summary another effective year at SoLA, we’d prefer to welcome our three new staff people for 2016: Silvia Tavares, Jess Rae and Bek Parton.

Silvia and Jess both occupy positions as Assistant Teachers and happen to be part of SoLA this season through teaching in to the programme. For 2016, Silvia is going to be analyzing DESN 101, LASC 216 and SOCI 314, and Jess is going to be analyzing DESN 103, ENGN 106 and LASC 316 and both will give you valuable teaching contributions into other courses for example LASC 217, LASC 321 and LASC 406.

Bek Parton occupies the positioning of Project Coordinator and although in a roundabout way

a part of our teaching staff, she'll participate they that actually works behind the curtain that can help make our programme just like it's.

The SoLA Area Tour with this year saw 36 students and three staff attempt COAST, a 5-day immersion within the experience and focus from the magical landscape where land and water meet. Locations incorporated Akaroa, Onawe Peninula, Sumner, Kaiapoi Pa and Township, Pegasus Town, Gore Bay, and Kaikoura – a seaside voyage from peninsula to peninsula.

Finding yourself in this landscape, or seascape, offered windy and salty, yet sunny, encounters drawing, examining, walking, viewing, building as well as cruising around the ocean! (seasonality didn't permit literal immersion). Having a concentrate on natural processes, cultural understanding, seaside developments, design interventions and materiality, students took together engaging and memorable encounters.

It has to also be observed that Nancy, Don and Shona were well-impressed using the students’ cooking and cleaning skills… despite them most likely not doing them in your own home!

A week ago Mick Abbott, Jacky Bowring, Kate Blackburne and Li Xuejing will be in Beijing going to Tsinghua College as well as their Department of Landscape Architecture. The visit belongs to a 3-siblings research partnership between Tsinghua College, Kuming College of Science and Lincoln subsequently College, and it is a reciprocal trip following a delegation number of park specialists visited SOLA and together with South Island nature this past year.

A few days was split between investing time at Tsinghua, going to people in the delegation as well as their particular parks and institutes, and collecting data for any comparative study. It had been an active and incredible couple of days. An absolute highlight to date was investing each day using the Mind of Beijing Parks going to World Heritage Sites over the city and ending up in their management staff. Your day was jam-full of Chinese culture and history, awe-inspiring traditional Chinese landscape architecture and incredible modern landscape architecture. This incorporated around Beijing Museum of Chinese Gardens and Landscape Architecture, Tanzhe Temple, Xiangshan Park and Beijing Botanic Gardens (including their incredible green-houses by during the night!) Investing each day in the Tsinghua Unviersity Department of Landscape Architecture was fantastic. I was given an excursion of the studio spaces and proven student work good examples.

Mick and Jacky were asked to provide research workshops within the mid-day that have been attended by many people postgraduate landscape architecture students.

We’ve also together with Summer time Structure, The Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square and also the Temple of Paradise.

Words and photos: Kate Blackburne

Mike Bathelmeh reflects upon his encounters travelling through Karnataka in South India captured. He notes a particular highlight within this blog entry:

The primary focus from the trip was the UNESCO World Heritage site in Hampi, the remains from the capital from the Vijayanagara Empire which ruled South India from 1336 to 1565. Hampi is really a magical place, with 100s of temples, ancient market places and monuments occur an amazing hilly landscape of enormous rounded granite big chunks of rock, coconut palms, grain paddies and sugar stick fields. The entire complex covers greater than 25 square km divided through the sinuous Tungabhadra River, filled with bathing ghats for individuals morning hours traditions.

At its height, Hampi was the place to find 500, 000 people and 1000's of horses, camels and tigers. Evidence of these a comprehensive city are available all over the dominant Virupaksha temple, featuring a 50m tall East-facing Gopuram, or tower, over its primary entrance. The 11 storey Gopuram is included in designs and carvings and lived on by snooty bands of apes who ignore everybody with equal distain.

Leading from the temple may be the 700m-lengthy bazaar where gold and jewels for the entire of South India were exchanged. Goat's now occupy this space, perfectly happy to wander with the empty stone marketplace structures on the way to better grazing. Ongoing towards the finish from the bazaar and also over a little saddle leads site visitors towards the remains of some other temple dedicated to Shiva, the Achyutaraya temple, set inside a distinctive small valley. Even further away but nonetheless close to the Tungabhadra site visitors discover the Vittala temple, featuring more intricate designs and carvings and structures in brick and stone.

Crossing the Tungabhadra using a small boat (usually full of vacationers) and climbing a minimal rise takes the customer right into a quite different but equally breathtaking landscape of grain fields delicately situated in to the lightly sloping landscape and errant big chunks of rock. Even out of this side from the river, the Virupaksha temple rules the landscape, supplying a obvious indication from the energy from the Vijayanagara dynasties.

Hampi is really a calm and peaceful devote an amazing setting, accompanied by friendly people. It's a place in which you never get fed up with wandering and making new breakthroughs, especially in the evening once the warm red-colored glow from the big chunks of rock within the sundown bring a brand new layer of mystery and charm towards the landscape. Should you ever get the opportunity to go to South India, then make certain to place Hampi in your itinerary, and permit yourself a few days a minimum of to understand more about this unique place.

The 2nd assignment for LASC 218 requested students to understand more about a website memorable for them growing up. These were requested to provide six ‘voices’ of the landscape, channelling relevant author’s positions as well as their own understanding. Second year student Chrissy Morehu chose Murupapa, a website settled by her forefathers from the Tuhoe Tribe. She referred to the possible lack of understanding she felt for that associations and ideas her forefathers had of the landscape. She examined this understanding through six voices covering:

1 + 2: Character as perceived with the individual versus community.