Cause And Effect In Architecture

Tom Leader Lecture

Cause and Effect

During the lecture series, Tom Leader lectured on works that he has done throughout his career. One of the main points he mentioned was cause and effect in landscape architecture design. During his design process, he likes to let the surrounding area and cultures tell him what he can and cannot do. Every landscape is different and he seems to try to use this to his advantage in practice and discipline.

One of the cause and effect projects that he talked about was one where they planted many trees in what seemed like a grid. In this particular area, there were many problems with deer destroying small trees. A solution that they came up with was to have a cover around the trees until they reached a certain size. They did not however use just basic PVC, but used tubes that actually illuminated during the night adding a pleasant effect. Here, he obviously worked off the surrounding land to solve this problem and was able to add a new effect that was not there before.

Another project was one that he put together in our building, derived from previous work. The wall of air pillows layered with many different strata that represented changes in our life. The different strata ranged from childhood things such as diapers all the way up to objects that represented life’s elder stages. The wall to me was like a timeline of our lives represented with everyday objects. Here they were put together layered with air pillows, forming a wall that closed in on you. He had done projects very similar to this in the past, which I believe was practice leading up to what we saw, even though that probably was not his plan. This was just a project, where over the years he tried new things, and searched for new meanings.

Tom Leader’s approach to architecture reflects a discipline to try to stick to a certain rule

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