In the 40 years that "Landscape Architect and Specifier News" has been chronicling this remarkable industry, one aspect that hasn't changed is the passionate commitment of Landscape Architects to beneficially transform the outdoor environment. However, that same timespan has witnessed significant advancements to the tools that assist design professionals in fulfilling their passions. To help you plan for what's next in this inevitable progression, LASN reports on the current state of industry-supporting technology and where it is headed.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Characterized as potentially "the most transformative technology of the 21st century" by Stanford University's Institute for Human-Centered AI, artificial intelligence and its impact on landscape architecture is a good place to start.

Describing AI's capacity, Karla Saldana Ochoa, an assistant professor at the University of Florida's School of Architecture and webinar presenter for LandscapeWebinars.org, draws a distinction between technology as a tool and as an instrument. She says the main difference "lies in the interaction with the user's creativity," and believes that AI is versatile enough that Landscape Architects can use it both as a tool that is defined for a specific use and as an instrument, which requires an individual's creativity to produce an outcome "that is masterful and can only be conceived with humans (intersecting with) artificial intelligence."

Writing for TechTarget, Michael Bennett, the director of educational curriculum at Northeastern University's Institute for Experiential Artificial Intelligence, speculates that AI's greatest impacts on businesses, organizations, and government entities will involve increasing the speed at which they make decisions.

As an example of this, Saldana applied artificial intelligence to a tree mapping project meant to devise a plan for a post-hurricane rapid response to care for essential fruit trees. Starting with satellite images of a particular area, AI tools pinpointed which plants were fruit trees and classified them into their different types - banana, coconut, papaya, and mango -- with 80% accuracy. "I think this, in contrast to zero, is a very good example of a fast approach to identifying these specific trees," Saldana concludes.

The advent of generative artificial intelligence (gen AI) - using algorithms to produce original content, such as still and motion images based on a person's requests, or 'prompts' - is being put to the test by many trades, including landscape architecture. Prompt entry tools such as DALL-E, MidJourney, and Sora can be text-based or voice-based. Tim Mucci, an AI-focused blogger at IBM, reasons that as gen AI improves its ability to understand the "nuances of human language," it will "provide deep expertise for specialized industries."

"A whole lot of work is being done right now on the concept of prompt design," says Elizabeth Desrosiers, adjunct faculty member at St. Louis Community College and a certified project management professional who has 30 years of experience in the IT industry and a BFA from the Milwaukee Institute of Design. "Being able to ask the right questions is a very specific skill - garbage in, garbage out - so for people who want to start using these tools, spending time building their prompt design skills is important."

Generative AI is "changing really, really fast," adds Desrosiers*, "As it moves into our industry, I'm looking forward to seeing where it fits and how it's going to enable us to do even more exciting things in landscape design."

Krystina Maybay*, PLA, owner of Kismet Design and another LandscapeWebinars.org presenter, is confident that design skills will not become obsolete in the age of artificial intelligence. "Base mapping and fact-finding, I think it's going to have an impact on that," she declares. "I'm not worried about AI taking over the creativity part of design."

XR or Extended Reality (VR + AR)
Extended Reality, or XR, refers to the merging of virtual reality (VR) - being visually enveloped by a completely artificial environment as viewed through a headset - and augmented reality (AR) - using smart glasses to view existent physical surroundings that are being visually enhanced by artificial objects. 3D is an important tool for Maybay, especially when working with a client who has trouble visualizing a finished project from 2D presentations. She creates 3D drawings and implements 3D modeling, and concedes that VR will take visualizing to another level.

 
According to Desrosiers, VR works well for concepts and visualization, but she has reservations about using it to present a final design. She acknowledges that environments created for VR can look realistic with very advanced technology such as that used for fighter pilot training, but economically feasible virtual environments still look too artificial to her liking.

"This is where virtual reality is the weakest right now," states Desrosiers. "I don't think it's mature enough yet. There is going to be a disconnect for a while between the expectation of the client and reality until these artificial environments look so realistic that it's almost hard to tell."

Maybay agrees regarding the risk of setting false expectations: "In a landscape, nothing is static. You want to have the final image look like this beautiful, mature landscape but (at first), it's not going to look like that. And every season, every year it's going to change."

As she does for her students, Desrosiers advises experimenting with VR and AR, acquiring a headset or smart glasses, and trying out applications that output VR and AR for landscape design "because, when it comes, you don't want to be starting from scratch."

Desrosiers is more encouraged about AR's current value to landscape designers, as it can create a somewhat realistic experience for the client who, with AR glasses, can look out at their site and see the new 3D elements - generated by a Landscape Architect and imported into the experience - superimposed on the real-life vista.

Drones
According to 3Laws Robotics, a company specializing in robotic efficiency, almost eight in ten firms in the design and construction industries will harness drone technology. The MIT Technology Review speculates that - as drone technology grows and regulations, especially the FAA's 'line of sight' rule, lessens - drones will become more effective and robust at a lower cost. Improvements will include autonomous operations, such as docking with recharging stations, and longer flight distances.

Unmanned aircraft system (UAS) solutions provider Dronefly forecasts that next-gen drones outfitted with AI-driven automation will feature the ability to pre-optimize flights based on machine-learned algorithms, real-time flight path adjustments for peak efficiency, object detection and avoidance for increased safety, and more sophisticated data analytics. Flight times might triple due to hybrid power systems.

Advancements specific to the landscape architecture industry include drones equipped with LiDAR - a technology that measures distances by emitting laser light beams from a base unit, recording the time it takes for the beams to return to the unit and ultimately assembling the data into a 3D illustration to produce accurate mapping of a site's topography.

Spexi has assembled a global network of aerial imagery providers that can capture drone photos and footage on a custom-order basis and deliver them in a matter of days, which helps solve logistical issues Landscape Architects can encounter when aerial images are preferred for a project.

Maybay has used drones for site analysis, especially to get images of areas that are hard to access. She notes that, as drone cameras advance, the higher-quality images they produce improve landscape designers' base-mapping processes. And though drones combined with AI may be able to execute a complete site analysis, Maybay is again assured that the technology will not "replace the human/personal connection of design."

Advanced Image Gathering and Creation
Besides drones being equipped with LiDAR capabilities, some more recent mobile phones have this technology built into them. An innovative use involves the ability to generate a 3D digital element, such as a tree or bush, for your 3D design. "I can take my phone with LiDAR, walk around a plant, and, with enough time, create a 3D model automatically," Desrosiers explains. The quality of the render varies based on the time put into capturing the image, but, with enough diligence, Desrosiers assures you can "get a very accurate image of what you are looking at."

Photogrammetry - which has evolved from an analog, optical-mechanical domain to the digital realm of computer vision (the automated detection of real-world, physical information from image data) - is a technology Desrosiers is partial to for "capturing images and combining them (with stitching software) to create a 3D digital model of the physical world - the bigger picture."

The software stiches 2D images together by recognizing and merging their overlapping edges to build up a digital three-dimensional surface mesh depicting the physical environment. The results can then be used during the 3D rendering phase of a design project. Some software programs include a digital ruler that can measure dimensions and distances. Peering into the future, Desrosiers sees "AI significantly improving the quality of LiDAR and photogrammetry."

Specialized cameras can also deliver 360-degree photography. An example of this is the Insta 360, which has built-in stabilization. A new image-capture innovation for standard DSLR cameras comprises two 180-degree lenses side-by-side for stereo capture. To view advanced images, Desrosiers advises using a VR headset and software such as ImmerGallery that can interpret and display 2D, 3D, 180-degree 2D/3D, or panoramic 360-degree 2D/3D image types like a slideshow.

Computer Horsepower
Effective use of much of the technological capabilities discussed up to now requires a computer with a lot of muscle, including a heavy-duty graphics card, which is the kind of technology the PC gaming industry typically embraces early and waits for others to catch up. With that in mind, here is a look at what the future portends for that specialized sector.

TechRadar, a gaming-focused media outlet, predicts that new architectures and AI-powered technologies will lead to more well-defined visuals that demand less power, Wi-Fi 7 will improve connectivity, and artificial environments will become more photorealistic, especially as the use of ray tracing - a technology that attempts to mimic the real-world manner that light behaves - increases.

According to computing solutions manufacturer GIGABYTE, leading-edge technology includes the DDR5 memory standard, the PCIe 5.0 interface standard, the Z690 chipset, solid-state drives (SSDs) using the NVMe (non-volatile memory express) data transfer protocol, and Intel's 12th Gen CPU.

Of course, all this power comes at a price, and Desrosiers is not so sure that price points on hardware technology will decrease to a level that will significantly lower the overall cost of entry that is projected for other technologies. "Watching the trends, the software is keeping up," she reveals. "As the computers get more powerful, the software requires even more."

In Closing
Landscape architecture today relies on technology to a significant degree to help ensure projects succeed. Because technology changes so fast, Elizabeth Desrosiers strongly recommends keeping informed about new developments, advising: "Just knowing something's possible gets you 80 percent of the way. The extra 20 percent is experimenting and learning how to use it for your own specific case. I'm all about how we can do things more efficiently, more accurately, and with higher quality so we can spend more time thinking creatively. Advancements in digital technologies will continue to make it faster and easier for [Landscape Architects] to perform their roles. The key challenge ahead is ensuring digital visions accurately represent real-world environments."

Encapsulating artificial intelligence, Karla Saldana Ochoa relates, "I think there are a lot of things that need to be considered. I think that we need to be testing this in our profession. The best ways to do this is to just start asking the question: Is this something an AI model can help, or not?"

Krystina Maybay sums up her considerations with, "Creativity should not be templated. I would love for technology overall to allow me to focus on the creative work to a greater extent and less on the busy work so I can use more of my time on the more enjoyable aspects. I look for technology to help me get closer and closer to that."

Click here to see this entry in the LASN 40th Anniversary Issue.