Over the last few years I have met and spoken to many designers whether landscape architects, architect, industrial or graphic designers and usually people fall into two categories – designers with empathy or designers with ego. Designers with ego when you discuss or refer to any design (that isn’t theirs) whether it be my own […]
BOOK REVIEW | Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance: Angela Lee Duckworth
After hearing Angela on a TED talk podcast I was interested in reading her book -Â Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance: Angela Lee Duckworth. I found the first few chapters interesting but felt that after about 70-80 pages I had gotten the main points of the book. I perceived and read to the end, […]
Design regulations against terrorism – a catalyst for change
Over the last year there have been several terrorist incidents that have seen the loss of life in our cities and due to this acts we have seen governments have turned to security experts, police departments and intelligence experts to offer advice on how to make cities safer. This is a continuation of the ever […]
Deep Learning is set to help herbariums identify more plant species
Herbariums around the world have large collections of sample sheets with dried plants pressed ready for  taxonomists to annotate, classify. This process often takes time and many herbariums don’t have the resources to catalogue the sample sheets, however researchers at Costa Rica Institute of Technology recently undertook a study using deep learning to analyze a big dataset with thousands […]
Solving the crowding and the associated impacts on National Parks
Over recent periods there has been an increase in visitor numbers to National Parks in several countries including China, USA(+7.7% 2016), Canada(+7% 2011-2016), South Africa (6%). Seeing people enjoy the natural beauty and conservation areas is encouraging when we often hear about the disconnection of people from nature. The downside is increased numbers is the […]