a01P O R T F O L I O

A C A D E M I C P O R T F O L I Oby Dav id Roh r

C O N T E N T S

Early plans

Implementation I

Serial vision

Implementation II

Art gallery

Urban design

Housing development

Strategy

Miscellaneous

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E A R L YP L A N S

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H U N T E R S Q U A R E

I n t r o d u c t i o n t h r o u g h d r a w i n g

As freshmen, our very first task was

to measure and draw. Our tutor took us to

4 open spaces with nothing more

than paper and pencils. These places

were located in an urban context but

all had a completely different way of

dealing with the surrounding.

Having a background in landscape

construction works, I thought it was a

rather plane first exercise,

but I was mistaken.

Measuring the place in footsteps was time

consuming but it is this specific time spent

in those places that allowed me to slowly

feel the genuis loci, the spirit of the place.

This would turn out to be a first step to

change my perception and my relationship

to the open realm.

◄ HUNTER SQUARE : L-shaped plaza wrapped around a 17th century church, positioned on the royal mile, Edinburgh’s main

historic artery.

Its touristic character, the various pubs of it’s surrounding and its key position at an important junction keep this place busy at any

time. Trying to measure things with steps got me

a couple of funny looks.

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H O P E ' S C O U R T

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D U N B A R ' S C L O S E

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D Y N A M I C H E A R T H

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I M P L E M E N T A T I O N I

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It was a sunny afternoon when we

visited the park of Cammo estate.

We had to take the bus from the city

center to the outskirts of Edinburgh.

We could not quite remember where

exactly we had to stop and asked

the driver for directions.

These details may seem irrelevant, but I

am convinced that the journey is part

of the experience of a place.

The brief consisted into picking

a sculptor and fitting his work in

a semi agricultural context. The

entrance of the park opens into the

suburb and the site shares 2 edges

Fitting sculptures in a former estate

with fields.

Walking through the park, I was struck

by its unexpected rustic beauty, and

by it’s lack in human presence.

These where the premises of what was

going to be my project.

I wanted to contrast with the feeling

of emptiness and contemplation

of this place, therefor I based my work

on the relationship between the body

and the space surrounding it.

I chose the creations of

Anthony Gormley. His sculptural work

on the human figure in the landscape is

an ongoing source of inspiration to me

and succeed to express what words

struggle too.

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S E R I A L

V I S I O N

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Another way to represent a place

A lot of our work in first year was based

on observation and experimenting

with visual ways to represent them.

The serial vision project consisted in using

the technique described by Gordon Cullen

in The Concise Landscape, in which

a space is represented by a series of

perspective drawings placed along

a defined route.

My group was composed of Anna, Chris,

Jonathan and me. We wandered a bit

around town, map in hand, trying to figure

out an appropriate path long enough to

provide a series of 60 pictures. Afterwards,

we would just print and trace them

in the studio.

Thanks to this exercise, my perception

of urban spaces shifted a little more:

I realized that there are many ways

to represent space and therefor that space

is rather a concept than a tangible reality.

I M P L E M E N T A T I O N I I

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C R E A T I O N

From implanting to designing

We already altered an outside space with

someone else’s work, it was now time to create

our own structures. We went on a tour around

Edinburgh and visited a couple of medium sized

sites from the the cost line to the suburbans.

Back at the college, we were to pick one place

to design a built feature small enough to allow us

to push the design to the detailing stage.

I chose Blackford Hill because its vegetation

and waters felt like an urban oasis which turned

out to be more of a green island: When I climbed

up its steep slopes I discovered that the site was

bigger than the eye could see at first sight.

Arriving on top of the hill, I finally turned around

and was rewarded by a 360° view of the town,

the sea, and the Highland foothills. It was the

most nature I had felt in Scotland since I arrived

and that would reflect in my work.

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Just a timber frameThe top of the hill offered these amazing

views in all directions but was exposed

to quite strong winds, rendering the whole

experience not as appreciable as

it could be. My idea was simple enough:

let’s build a couple of sheltered benches up

there so that people don’t feel the need

to go back down after 10 minutes.

Considering the natural feel of the place,

I decided to work as much as possible with

natural materials, and designed this timber

frame out of oak.

Now it does not seem to protect much from

the wind and looks like a bit of a tripping

hazard, but this is only the frame supporting

the main material, and is supposed to

be just a temporary built...

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H A self- constructing structure

The frame is actually just a support for vegetation which is

meant to be planted in between the timber planks which act

as both surface an support. The costs of this design would

be ongoing hence it would neede biannual tree care to get

them to the desired shape. This cost was to be balanced out

in some proportion by the fact that when the trees gradually

grow into their position, the planks are to be removed to avoid

phloem vessels compression and strangling. When the whole

structure has been taken apart, the cycle can start again

some place else, to take advantage of one of the site’s many

views.

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A R T G A L L E R Y

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First contact with earthworks

The Notthingham art gallery project

was the first one without site visiting.

The whole design process was realized

remotely. Having been told since day one that

good practice is designing from the outside in, I

felt a bit destabilized by the inability

of making physical contact with that outside we

were suppose to design from. It seems now that

being able to adapt is a landscape architect’s

key quality.

In parallel to this project, I was following

a course on contours and the mathematical

exercise of cutting and filling. I used

this knowledge to create a design with

underground parking, and used that same soil

to elevate the building at the adjacent

woodland’s canopy top. This provides the art

gallery with whole day natural lighting, and

allows underground levels to be built without

any need of digging.

The costs of the retaining walls supporting

the massive earth works would be partially

compensated by the fact that the design

has virtually exactly as much cut than fill,

and by the considerable benefits of having

a car-free park designed as the gallery’s outside

extension.

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G R O W I N G D E T A I L S

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U R B A N D E S I G N

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Q U A T E R M I L E P L A Z A

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More than residual space

The Quatermile development project is one

of Foster and Partners architects’s numerous

award winning development, and is conveniently

located 5 minutes away from our campus.

Designing in an enclosed yet well connected

space was something new and a form

of introduction to high profile plaza creation.

The eminently strong architecture forming

the four edges of the site had to be addressed

with special attention and the small size of the

site made it prone to quick cluttering.

The glass omnipresence made this place

quite cold and the relatively narrow accesses

rendered it almost private-like.

My concept was to try to attract people into

the plaza with circular shapes and vegetation

in contrast with rectangles of glass, while trying

to harmonize the design by anchoring building’s

lines and corners in the ground through change

in materials.

H O U S I N G D E V E L O P M E N T

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How housing can structure open space

This time we went on a completely

rural site for a project in housing

development. The site was over 10

miles away from the city center and

located on what used to be agricultural

infrastructure. The strip shaped field was

about 3 hectares big, and the brief asked

to fit in 50 units. With a density as low as

16.6 units/ha, the main question seemed

to be how do I make this relatively vast

open space lost in the fields,

as welcoming and attractive as possible?

Private gardens

Houses

Courtyards

Public spaces

Front gardens

Proposed contours

Existing contours

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But this is not quite how this projected started.

We first went on a sort of housing development

tour and tried not to be too loud doing so

because believe it or not, residents may not

appreciate a bus of students walking around

their houses, camera in hand.

I found myself quite interested

in the Bo’ness - phase 2 and the

Princess garden developments, because they

got me thinking about the feel of privateness of

a place in contrast with it’s actual status , and

the idea of a grey area in between public and

private.

In matter of houses, I have always liked

the ancient roman style with its patio acting

as a secured open space in the middle

of the building, and the feeling of security seems

like a key value in housing strategies.

I replicated that square shape in a fractal fashion

in this design: The house rows surround 2 main

open spaces. On the right hand side plan,

the upper, longer square is allocated to

playgrounds both for younger and older

children, whereas the bottom, smaller one is

more of a terraced quiet place. On a smaller

scale the house’s lay out is an alternation

of fenced private gardens and semi-public

courtyards offering parking spaces and

hopefully, less of the anonymous feel you get in

too repetitive housing schemes.

Public, semi-public and private

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S I T E M O D E L L I N G

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SECTIONS & CONTOURS

S T R A T E G Y

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B E T W E E N F O R T H S

Changing focusThe last project I would like to write about,

is the Stirlingshire one. It practically

consisted in a day trip around the county

and a quite open brief asking to take into

account both the current state

of the landscape and it’s potential

for change. In doing so we where to take

a position on what we felt was the right

choice for the future. That would allow us

to develop a strategy proposal on a large

scale. This map shows Glasgow’s Clyde

forth to the west and Edinburgh’s Firth of

forth to the east. In other words, this is the

place where we could expect one day to

see the development of Scotland’s main

Metropolis.

I worked together with Monika on

the idea of revealing where the best places

for tomorrow’s development might be and

how to take full advantage of what lies in the

landscape. To add a little more edge to our

project, we wanted to create a new status

for developments to come: something in

between the hard-to-get national park title

and your common large scale development

strategy, taking advantages of both.

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◄ This conceptual drawing of the current state of the resources and developments represents the central position of the topographic prominence and the resources wrapped around it.

◄ This is what our strategy aims

to achieve: Interconnection and

symbiotic activities in a place fit to create an example of long-term and large-scale sustainable

planning project.

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From digital to realTo help us building a mental map of such

a massive “site”, we decided to build a model

composed of layers representing the density

and connectivity of a specific characteristic of

the landscape. We decided to group them under

5 families: Agricultural, Woodland, Hydrology,

Urban settlements and Recreational poles.

For each of these group a abstract map would

be drawn to help focusing on one strategic part

of the landscape at a time. By doing so

I mapped existing features with full circles

and paths and potential development sites with

outlined ones. The model was designed as both

a conceptual representation and an analytical

tool hence the layers where loose and anyone

was free to stack them together in whichever

order chosen, allowing to view and work out

specific places and developments.

M I S C E L L A N E O U S

C O P P E R W I R E S M O D E L S

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E A R L YD R A W I N G S

L A S E RC U T I

L A S E RC U T I I

Work collected during my BA(Hons) MScat the Edinburgh College of Art, Scotland.

contact: dav.rhr@gmail.com