Representation of Space, Information, and Design Interventions

Since visual communication/storytelling is such an important issue in the representation of space, my plan to find and select examples involved Googling ‘award winning urban design presentations’, choosing the first project from images that visually grabs my attention, and then analyzing why it drew my attention.  Not a very scientific or scholarly method but effective for this assignment (and fun because by this time in the semester I need something fun).  All of the chosen projects are student work (not built).

This is the first project example and description (qt’d from web site velo-city2013.com)

 

“Implementing Vienna’s cycle way network: during the winter semester 2012/2013, the Department of Landscape Planning and Garden Design and IVV TU Wien (Research Center of Transport Planning and Traffic Engineering of Vienna University of Technology) organized a practice-oriented design course for students of architecture, civil engineering and spatial planning with a focus on continuing the cycle way along the Wien River bed.”

It is not a particularly good example for this assignment with just a few simple diagrams, maps, images, and minimal text. Nevertheless, it is very easy to ‘read’ the story visually from the images and icons and understand the project despite not being able to read the text. There is a good amount of white space around the images in the center which allows one to focus on the most important aspects – the proposed route and public sites - and then move to the supporting details – diagrams and photos.  The presentation is lacking supporting analysis and would have benefited from before and after images to demonstrate the experience of using the new spaces.  Also, the lines drawn from the images to the map detract from the clarity.

On the flip side is this project by Plymouth University Master of Architecture students in 2014 (plymarch.wordpress.com).

 This project was to be a proposal for the regeneration of a bus and train station on the Polish side of Cieszyn City.  This student team went far beyond the scope of the project and produced a manual (top portion of board) to aid understanding and to provide tools for the residents of Cieszyn to use in planning the development of the region, city, and local areas.  

The project includes a wide variety of process, data, analysis, and intervention visuals which are very effective and understandable and the manual information is well organized. But overall there is far too much information and it is very difficult to find the story.  Visually it is all so overwhelming and lacks a sense of hierarchy so that one’s eyes cannot find a place to focus.  It would have been better to limit the board presentation to the site analysis and intervention and put the additional information in an actual booklet.

The third project is by a team of 5^th year Landscape Architecture and Architecture students in an urban studio in 2013 (wordpress.philau.edu).

The focus of the project was on research and design of an eco-district framework plan for the community of Germantown.  The team vision statement was: “To sew the neighborhoods of Germantown through a system of pedestrian oriented green thoroughfares that enhance the quality of life, strengthen the commercial corridor and provide access to parks and green spaces.”

The presentation includes area photos and mapped layers of analysis, vision imagery, intervention concept models, and limited text. Overall, the story is easy to read through the analysis and vision but the intervention models are squished up and a little confusing because the perspective image is not oriented the same direction as the plan views.  The stacked map layers at the left are redundant and could be removed to give more room for the intervention to read easier. Also, the analysis images are bigger scale than the design model so they are reading as more important than the design.

This exercise analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of these three projects has helped me see how important the visual communication is in storytelling and the presentation of projects.  I feel this is a weakness in my own project presentations so, hopefully, I can now apply some of the effective techniques (clean graphics with visual space) in these examples and avoid the bad ones (too much/too little information, inappropriate hierarchy/scale).