Noah's Landscape Journal

Lecturer: Duncan Goodwin

Cooperation with structural engineers:

Structures in Landscape Architecture

• Retaining walls
• Any other wall
• Podium Decks
• Pergolas
• Any
• Banks (Soil banks etc.)
• Gardens on a substructure (Roofgardens or Gardens with a basement underneath

The conversations between Architect, Structural Engineer and Landscape Architect are always important!

Fundamentals of Structural Engineering:

• Transfer of load to the ground -> Load Path

Different Load Effects of a Building (Excerpt from a Swiss construction training manual)

History of Structural Engineering

My personal favourite example of historical structural engineering, the Pantheon in Rome (125 AD)

Vaults

Timber Truss

Iron

Chrystal Palace, 1850s

Concrete

+ compression

– tension (unless reinforced)

It’s always important to think about the use of the different Pavements regarding the loads that it has to hold up to (traffic classes)

Fundations

Californian bearing ratio (CBR), parameter for determining the appropriate thickness of flexible pavements -> 5%

As long as the ground has a CBR of 5% or more, we will be fine!

Types of Foundation (Swiss construction training manual)

Raft foundation Section of Geometry and Formwork plan (Swiss construction training manual)

Retaining Walls

Example of the use of retaining walls in practice:

In this project we had to deal with minimal space and a big height difference close to the building wall, including a pathway alongside the building.

Draft of four views/sections

The TerraMur System is a very interesting variation of retaining walls, especially used as a protective dam for very steep embankments. It can also include greening.

Section of the TerraMur system

Scaling the structure of a retaining wall in the right way is essential!