Technology and Landscapes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The project was based on the sensing of the invisible flow in landscapes that people don’t normally pay attention to. In this case I was sensing the cellphone signal frequencies when the cellphone is communicating with the towers in the area. The actual sensor that I chose to use was an antenna that sensed different frequencies from low to high. The display component of the sensor would be an array of led lights of different color that would change with the different frequencies which would attract they eye of the public which would induce their curiosity and make them walk into the spaces I intend to provide with this design.

The design is composed of multi-functional spaces with different components like gathering spaces like amphitheaters, learning spaces that could be used in amphitheaters or outdoor classrooms, meditation from gardens to labyrinths, edible gardens, and habitats. These spaces are put in place based on the notion of edge to core conditions. For example, an amphitheater is more of an edge condition to where  a meditation garden is more of a core condition. Finally the design is intended for the public to experience the space and connect back with nature and where technology can coexist with this nature. It would also make people see the impact of the connection we have with our cellphones and maybe they could use the same connection with nature.

Allen Jacobs Lecture

I attended the lecture of renown urban designer that had a discussion with our dean Michael Woo. I thought Mr. Jacobs is an interesting man. He is straight forward and has strong feelings towards what he believes. As many designers know he was the city planner in San Francisco and one thing he said was that the Transamerica building was ugly. He also disliked that in that time one of the designers was trying get rid of part of a street to add a park around the building and he said he doesn’t like when streets get taken away from the public. There was one thing that he said that caught my interest the most and it was that landscape architects are too nice when designing for people. That made me start to think in what way are they too nice and I hoped he would have elaborated more on that subject, but he just said that statement. All in all I thought that it was an interesting lecture.

Final Circuit: cellphone signal detector

This was my final circuit that was used to define my final project to show the measurement of the invisible flow which is cellphone signals. Although this circuit was an existing circuit I found online and was named a simple cellphone detector circuit, it was not so simple to build it. I had trouble following the schematics thus had to ask the professor for help to connect all the wires correctly because when I did it myself I put things all turned around.

In the end I couldn’t get it to work even with the power it asked for which was 12v. When I connected the batteries I only got a small dim light in the led light I put on the circuit, so I’m not sure what was wrong. However, I believe if I had more time working on this and more tweaking to this circuit it would be fully functional and I would be able to collect data.

First Attempt Arduino Circuit

This circuit was of a multi-color LED light using an existing code using arduino. It was not too complicated because the instructions were really clear, so we were able to connect the right wires with the right place on the arduino. When I first saw this I thought to myself man this is going to be very hard since I had never worked with this kind of process of technology. The only thing that I used was my computer and even this I don’t know everything that is a computer. However, building this circuit made me see a different aspect of technology and I actually had some fun doing this circuit. At this point I still didn’t really understand how this technology would help in the design of landscapes.

Sensing Cellphone Signals in La Verne

This project is to choose something to sense on a landscape and in this case the site is La Verne, California. I chose to sense cellphone signals because today in the world cellphones or rather the signals that has this technology working is a large importance in society. In addition, it was an interesting topic to sense just to see how powerful this technology reigns even in this small area in California. So the purpose of the sensor I proposed to make would sense the signals every time people would pass by. In essence the sensor would react with the cellphone that the person is carrying. Before actually building the sensor I did some research to see the overall picture of the signals in this area as shown below.

This is a map I produced of signal location and strength in La Verne and in Los Angeles.