Karen M’Closkey and Keith VanDerSys on 'Dynamic Patterns'

Founding partners at PEG office of landscape + architecture with Jeff Sharpe, Karen M’Closkey and Keith VanDerSys (Associate Professor and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Landscape Architecture, respectively) have earned an international reputation for their pioneering use of digital tools and dynamic patterns. PEG’s work was the subject of a recent exhibition, Dynamic Patterns, at the University of Melbourne.

How did the exhibition come about?

A colleague at the University of Melbourne, Jillian Wallis, recently completed a book titled Landscape Architecture and Digital Technologies: Re-conceptualizing Design and Making (co-authored with Heike Rahmann) in which our practice was showcased. As part of a book launch event for this publication, we were invited to speak and exhibit our work.

What was your favorite project on exhibit?

We’d say it is our Testing the Waters project just because it’s an ongoing development using environmental modeling to look at the effects of global warming on Philadelphia’s waterfront. We hope this work will expand into a longer term endeavor that can affect the conversation about how this area is being developed. To facilitate this, we are teaching an option studio this fall partnering with environmental engineers, planners, and non-profit and municipal organizations.

Has there been a return to pattern in the built environment, due in part to technology? 

The prevalence of geometric and ornamental surface patterns is more indicative of disciplinary issues arising in architectural discourse and practice; and, yes, digital technology has played a key part in this shift. That this type of pattern-making is less prevalent in landscape architecture, though, is something we are very interested in exploring in our work; however, we are also interested in many kinds of pattern, not just geometric ones. For example, pattern-finding, or what might be more commonly referred to as spatial analysis, has been prevalent in landscape architecture since [longtime PennDesign faculty member] Ian McHarg. While this approach is useful for understanding a given condition, analysis alone is not directly generative of design. Recently, the development and integration of visual programming platforms into design fields has created a means to bridge the gap between analysis and design. Environmental data, for instance, can be used to inform and direct spatial and material organizations. Our work tries to advance methods of better integrating analysis and design in the field of landscape architecture.

How have environmental modeling and simulation tools evolved since you entered practice and founded PEG?

Only within the last five years or so has modeling and simulating environmental data become more accessible to landscape architecture. Computational fluid modeling, for instance, was only recently developed in the 1970s by federal organizations, like that of NASA and NOAA. Decades of laboratory and field testing have led to the development of a wide array of numerical models that can simulate the complex dynamics of fluids, like air and water. These models are now readily available and understandable to a much broader audience outside of the sciences and engineering. This, in theory at least, should facilitate the collaboration across fields.

What’s meant by the design “of nature” as opposed to “with nature”? Why is the distinction important?

Landscape architects do both—we design with natural processes and entities that literally have a life of their own (plants, animals, hydrological processes, etc.), but we also say design of nature because it emphasizes the constructedness of our landscapes and environments. We all design in highly altered places (e.g., with low functional value ecologically, disconnected hydrologically, and so on) so in this sense landscape architects are, through design, building these functions back into in our cities and landscapes. And since it is a rebuilding, and not a true restoration (i.e. to some other time), the design of nature should liberate us from being limited to conventional proposals or standardized solutions.