Point Cloud Research in Landscape Architecture

Point Cloud Research at the Chair of Professor Christophe Girot has allowed for considerable progress in matters of landscape modelling and representation. Point cloud-Technology has become central to most methods of design and analysis, and is used regularly to produce elaborate sections, elevations and plans from the remote sensing data. The chair has developed interactive models with this technology that enable boundless movement through virtual space. In addition, laser scan point cloud models when combined with ambient surround sound recordings produce a new kind of audiovisual landscape reality.

Research in the domain of point cloud modelling produced by the Chair of Landscape Architecture has been exhibited at the Venice Biennale, the Rotterdam Biennale, the World Economic Forum in Davos, The Future Cities Laboratory in Singapore, the Kyoto Institute of Technology, the Scientifica in Zürich and a Ted X Talk to mention but a few. The St. Gotthard Pass project in the Swiss Alps has been the core research project in large scale point cloud modelling over the past ten years, it is currently being amended through technical support from the Swiss Federal Railway company. The reality, thus represented through point cloud technology shows a combination of extraordinary rock formations and river beds combined to villages and infrastructure both above and below ground, thus creating a completely new perceptual dimension of contemporary alpine space. Other regions of the globe have also been investigated by the Chair using a similar modelling approach in cities like Singapore, Jakarta and Kyoto or in the Sonora Desert of Tucson or the Jordan River Valley at the border of Israel and Jordan.