Point Cloud Modelling the Alpine Landscape
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Christophe Girot, Professor and Chair of Landscape Architecture in the Architecture Department of ETH, introduces us to point cloud modeling – a tool that measures, with surprising accuracy, topological forms around us. Girot explains how the method has been able to translate a seemingly infinite set of tiny informational dots into more than a pretty pointillist picture. The gorgeous visualizations that result from the technology can indeed hypnotize, but they also provide a tool to investigate topographies. Manifestations such as the 20-meter projection of a fly-through made for Gotthard Landscape: The Unexpected View (ETH’s contribution to the 2014 Architecture Biennale in Venice) show us a view we would not otherwise be able to conceptualize. Christophe Girot, Professor and Chair of Landscape Architecture at the Architecture Department of the ETH (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) in Zürich since 2001, founded there the Institute of Landscape Architecture in 2005. The LVML (Landscape Visualising and Modelling Laboratory) directed conjunctly with ETH Professor Adrienne Grêt Regamey, has been in operation since 2009. It has enabled significant advances in landscape design, ecological analysis and point cloud modeling. The LVML has contributed to a broad variety of research projects in Switzerland and abroad ranging from the “Gotthard Landscape, Myths and Technology” Project exhibited at the 2014 Architecture Biennale in Venice done in collaboration with the USI Mendrizio, to the “Bits of Kyoto Gardens” exhibition made with the Kyoto Design Lab and shown at the Art Chiyoda Gallery in Tokyo in 2016.
