Overview of the project

• Art University's course "History of Landscape Architecture"
• Term: 2008/II
• Supervisor: Jan Pesonen
• Team: Henn Runnel, Kadri Klementi, (Helis Heiter)

Throughout the term me and Kadri were researching the history of landscape architecture in Europe in 19th century. Well, it turned out to be a bit more interesting than we had assumed beforehand. The culmination of the course turned out to be quite groovy - we had to apply our newly gained knowledge and make a fast & sketchy project for the park of Kadriorg, Tallinn. The project turned out something different.

It is common that most of the design work for architectural projects is done through virtual medium nowadays, so we proposed a new design interface in a form of a computer game (not a real one of course). The board of the game reflects the real area in the Kadriorg park and it is divided into a grid. Common elements known from the 19th century park and garden design can be used in the game park.

This grid interface with movable elements could be a basis for a new type of park, where the users themselves can move around the elements and redesign the park. We called the game + the new typology the New Eclecticism in landscape architecture in the 21st century. If you know something about the era of 19th century, you might perceive the relevance :)

The basis for this solution was the realisation, that we are the first generation that has grown up with computer games as an important influence and source of knowledge (and language skills). Also, we realised, that there were architectural and planning games we used to play (i.e. Sim City) but there was no landscape architectural games. We need this type of games to raise a generation of really good professionals in the future :)