Parametric Design in Landscape Architecture

Have you ever heard of parametric design? Parametric design is the technique that uses algorithmic-based software to produce computational, generative, reactive, and immersive 3D models to be used in landscape architecture, planning, and architecture (Cantrell & Holzman, 2016; Jabi, 2013). There are many reasons that you, as a designer might be interested in learning to enter the parametric design world. For instance:

• Sometimes designers try to create aesthetics by playing with geometrics. The parametric design would provide a powerful tool for such innovations and let you iterate through multiple design solutions very quickly.
• There are problems and objectives that you can resolve easily with parametric design tools. Grasshopper is a popular tool for parametric design in the Rhino environment. In some situations, there are certain analyses that could be implemented with parametric design tools. For example, if you want to do a shadow analysis to calculate the surface area covered with shade of plants in different hours of daylight.
• Lands Design provides components for Grasshopper. It allows you to connect Lands Design objects like plants and terrains with other components in Grasshopper and finally do a lot of analysis automatically and develop your design in a faster way.

On this page you can find the Grasshopper components from Lands Design and further information about this tool. To learn more about parametric design in landscape architecture, you can start looking at these video tutorials.