In this era of computers, many in the business of landscape design feel that freehand sketching helps to both visualize and formulate design ideas. They feel that knowing how to draw by hand should come before learning the computer-based CAD system. Many say that being able to draw freehand on paper is useful both to the designer and to the people the designer works with, from clients to engineers.

“I worked in an office with 50 landscape architects. We all sat at drafting tables with our Mylar. At the time it was one of the largest firms in Canada and we had one person who was the designated CAD operator. I believe he was brought in because we were doing some work for Universal Studios in Orlando, Fla. We had to handle CAD master plans from Florida.” Kent Ford, of Kent Ford Design Group of Toronto, recalls working for a large company in 1988. In 1988 one person out of 50 could handle the computer load. By the mid-1990s the switch to computer dependence was truly underway. But even today that change is not universal.

A much different world

For Alexander Budrevics, today’s computer world is a long way from his place of birth in Latvia, in 1925. He grew up among some of the worst ravages of World War II. At war’s end, like so many other central Europeans, he was homeless while wrestling with the newly arrived peace. Budrevics found his niche in the U.K. He was a graduate of the Latvian horticultural school, so when he arrived in England in the late 1940s, he gravitated to the landscape trade. He found employment as an estate gardener. Realizing that this position was at best temporary, he looked for other opportunities. He applied and was accepted as a student at the London College of Art and Design, where his design abilities were finely honed. In 1952 he came to Canada and started his own landscape design company, Alexander Budrevics & Associates.

Now in his eighth decade, he has watched the changes that computers and software programs have brought to the industry. I visited him recently in his smart Don Mills office. “I don’t really have a great understanding of how computers work. I just know that today there is not a drafting board in this office, and for me that marks the great change in how we work.” If Budrevics needs a refresher course in the miracle of computerization, he need only leave his office, cross the corridor and enter one of the cubicles equipped with state-of-the-art computers to see computer aided drafting (CAD).

On one screen is a plan for the construction of a highrise office tower. The parking area is marked out with each individual parking space. With one stroke of the mouse, the computer operator designates any or all of the spots as handicapped parking. Another click on the mouse and parking lot becomes an oval. A flower bed in the centre of the parking area can be immediately changed in shape: round, rectangular, triangular. Another click of the mouse and a tree appears in the flower bed. Don’t like the tree? Click. It’s replaced by a shrub.

Pen and paper still rules

Miriam Mutton runs her own one-person firm in Cobourg, Ont. “I suppose I’m a bit unusual, as I don’t work on computers.” Mutton graduated from the University of Guelph in 1983. “We really never used computers through my whole course. We didn’t even have computers for note taking. Very soon after graduation, I started my own company and I was working with pencil and paper. I’m still doing that and I’m very happy with that system. Frankly, I don’t have the time to sit down at a computer and learn.” When Mutton is working on a collaborative project, where the lead architect or engineer is using CAD, she contracts out the computer work to a technician.

Kent Ford sees nothing unusual in Mutton’s position. “I couldn’t even draw a line on AutoCAD. I have no idea, zero skills, and no desire to learn. I am completely illiterate in terms of AutoCAD. Does that negatively affect my business? Absolutely not. Does it have a positive effect on my business? Yes, because it leaves me free to do what I should be doing and that is putting pen to paper and conceptualizing things in a free-hand manner.” Unlike Mutton, Ford’s company employs a full-time computer technician.

Catherine Berris runs Catherine Berris Associates in Vancouver. It is a major landscape architecture company currently engaged in a variety of civil engineering projects in B.C., including the Sea to Sky Highway that runs from West Vancouver to Whistler for the 2010 Olympics. She graduated in 1978 from Guelph. Computers played little part in her studies. Twenty years later, her company is involved with collaborative projects that require computers as essential tools. The company uses AutoCAD for designing and drafting and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for storing and analyzing data. “I still draw with pencil and paper, and then a technician puts it on AutoCAD. There’s something different about how people think when they have a pencil in their hand. I know a lot of the newer grads do not agree and some can’t do that, but I am not convinced that you can be as creative and free with the generation of ideas when you are on a computer.”

Danger of not learning to draw

Fiona Rintoul is a former faculty member with Guelph’s landscape program, and now runs Fiona Rintoul and Associates in that city. “I come from the school of thought that you design with a pencil and paper then put it on AutoCAD. I believe you get different design results when you design directly on CAD, because it is a different way of thinking. It’s a technical process and you’re not thinking of plant material as a living thing. I have noticed that students who design on AutoCAD don’t really get a feel for the biology. Plants become another piece of architecture in the landscape. I worry that we are turning out a generation of students who are not learning how to draw.” That is an opinion shared by current Guelph faculty member Sean Kelly of Stempski Kelly Associates. “I think when you’re doodling, you tend to think as you draw. The very action of drawing allows thinking.” What is clear is that the younger members coming into the profession are fully wired to new technology. “The students today are so much more technically advanced,” says Kelly. “They’re doing CAD in high school. They all have Ipods and personal computers. “Jeremy Nichols of Cobourg, Ont. is a trained architect, but his expertise is computers and software. He detailed the systems and programs generally used in the profession.

“AutoCAD is the universally accepted standard for computer drafting. Virtually all professionals use it; any that don’t must have a software program which allows them to transfer their work onto AutoCAD. It is the basic drawing program. It is also expensive, about $4,000, and they come out with new versions and updates every year. If you buy a new version, you can’t go back and use the old one. They force you to buy an expensive thing time and time again.”

New systems on market

Sketchup is a very clever 3-D program for design work. Sketchup gives a wonderful three dimensional visualization of a design. A designer can show a client the location of walls, how the steps relate and how plants and trees overhang the project. It’s not expensive. The company was recently purchased by Google and there is a free version of the program available for download and a professional version which costs about $300. Kelly agrees, “For quick demonstrations Sketchup is much more useful than AutoCAD. It allows users to present views from any vantage point by just a click of a button.”

It became clear while talking to a wide variety of design professionals that age matters. If computers were an important component in their studies, as with the newer graduates, they are strongly committed to the technology. Those who graduated pre-computer still cherish the pencil and paper. Despite that generational difference, there was universal agreement on a number of things. “AutoCAD as a tool for producing con-struction drawings is unbeatable. Sketchup for showing the client what he or she is getting is a very powerful tool,” says Kelly. There is general agreement that complex projects involving a variety of professions are immeasurably speeded up by computers. When every trade or profession is working from the same master plan, revisions are so much simpler once the design is on the computer. So computer expertise has be-come an essential for anyone now entering the profession. A recent listing of landscape architect job vacancies showed that without exception every employer demanded CAD expertise, including AutoCAD, Dynascape and Vectorworks. Catherine Berris, who does not work on a computer herself, understands that. “I’m the same; we don’t hire anyone who doesn’t have computer skills because that’s how we have to produce our final product. But what must be remembered is that technology is just a tool. It’s the way you think and the way you generate ideas that counts in our industry.”

Perhaps the reality is that computers are simply a tool like a pen or pencil. What connects designers like Capability Brown of the 1700s and today’s technically-savvy architects is not the type of tool, but the ability to visualize what pleases the eye, and then working to create the concept for all to enjoy.