WK02
History of Computer Graphics
CAD → NURBS → parametricism · the agentic-AI question
Lecture Slides
A History of Representational Tools
LAAR 61400 · Week 02
Charles Eliot — Sudbury Valley survey map
Warren Manning — Billerica Town Forest map
Jacqueline Tyrwhitt — sieve-map method, 1950
Ian McHarg — Design with Nature layer-cake overlay diagram
SYMAP at a mainframe console
SYMAP line-printer map, 1963
The punch cards that held the SYMAP program
Carl Steinitz
Jack and Laura Dangermond
An Edson bronze spline weight (duck) resting on lofting drawings
A row of ducks fairing a wooden spline batten across hull lines
B-SPLINE CURVE P0 P1 P2 P3 P4 control polygon (dashed) + smooth curve NURBS SURFACE
FROM B-SPLINE TO GRASSHOPPER 1967 “B-spline” named Schoenberg coins the term 1972 Cox–de Boor recurrence makes B-splines computable 1973 Riesenfeld thesis → Utah with Elaine Cohen · geometry lab 1975 Versprille thesis non-uniform + rational form 1980 NURBS named Boeing TIGER · R. Blomgren 1984 AGLib kernel Applied Geometry (Blomgren) 1994 McNeel licenses AGLib Sculptura plug-in · M. Gibson 1998 Rhino 1.0 Robert McNeel & Assoc. 2007 Grasshopper David Rutten · visual programming
NURBS SURFACE smooth, mathematically defined — resolution-independent
Low-poly mesh model with visible polygon facets
Sketchpad
IBM PC, 1982
Man using AutoCAD on a PC, 1987
Architecture office before the 1980s
Computers at NASA / JPL-Caltech
Martha Schwartz, Jacob Javits Plaza, New York, 1997
James Corner Field Operations, Philadelphia Navy Yards Central Green, 2015
James Corner and Alex MacLean, Taking Measures Across the American Landscape, 1996
James Corner and Alex MacLean, Taking Measures Across the American Landscape, 1996
Bradley Cantrell, Digital Drawing for Landscape Architecture, 2010
Diana Balmori, Drawing and Reinventing Landscape, 2014
Nadia Amoroso, Representing Landscapes: Digital, 2015
Zaha Hadid
Zaha Hadid
Z+T Studio
Z+T Studio
Z+T Studio, parametric construction
Z+T Studio, parametric construction
Philip Yuan, Chi She, robotic construction
Philip Yuan, Chi She, robotic construction
Philip Yuan, Chi She, robotic construction
Philip Yuan, Chi She, robotic construction
Fletcher Studio, South Park
Fletcher Studio, South Park parametric analysis
Fletcher Studio, South Park parametric analysis
Plasma Studio and Groundlab, Xi'an Expo Flow Garden
Xi'an Expo Flow Garden detail
Xi'an Expo Flow Garden detail
Little Island, New York, 2021
Little Island, New York, 2021
Little Island, New York, 2021
Little Island, New York, 2021
Field Operations and Diller Scofidio + Renfro, The High Line, 2009
Bradley Cantrell — sensing and responsive landscapes
TYPICAL DESIGN WORKFLOW — TOOLS PER PHASE 1 Site Research & Analysis GIS Photoshop Illustrator 2 Conceptual Design Rhino CAD Rendering Photoshop Trace paper 3 Design Development CAD 4 Construction Documentation CAD AutoCAD carries the rest of the way In a way, all you need to learn is AutoCAD.
ChatGPT-generated design board
ChatGPT-generated design board
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A Genealogy of Landscape Representation Tools

Not exhaustive — not all tools listed are in wide use in landscape practice.
Dates, makers, and acquisitions in the tooltips are drawn from published sources — see References ↓
Made with AI, may contain errors.

Drafting
Analysis
Modeling
Communication
Each bar spans a tool's lifespan · hover for detail

Scroll the timeline horizontally →

Computational representation did not begin with the PC. Sketchpad (1963), SYMAP (1963), and Esri's founding consulting work (1969) predate commercial software by two decades — but they lived in labs and on minicomputers, inaccessible to practitioners. The 1982 line is when the ecosystem actually opens: IBM PC, AutoCAD, and ARC/INFO all arrive the same year.

The tools never replaced each other. They accumulated. Almost none were built for landscape — borrowed from defense, car factories, highways, the movies, games. The Communication stack is the largest because the discipline is a visual culture. That imbalance is the argument.

The right edge is a question, not a tool. Agentic AI is drawn as the grey zone every bar dissolves into — not as a bar of its own. It does not sit in one category; it washes across all of them at once. Is it a tool on this chart, or something else?

References
  1. Carl Steinitz, “Beginnings of Geodesign: A Personal Historical Perspective,” ArcNews (Esri), Summer 2013. esri.com
  2. A. Krista Sykes, “A New Way of Seeing: The Laboratory for Computer Graphics and Spatial Analysis,” Harvard GSD News, Nov. 13, 2024. gsd.harvard.edu
  3. “University of Utah,” in Computer Graphics and Computer Animation: A Retrospective Overview (Ohio State University). ohiostate.pressbooks.pub
  4. “B-spline” (Schoenberg coined the term in 1967; the Cox–de Boor recurrence, 1971–72). Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
  5. “Non-uniform rational B-spline” (history of B-splines, Riesenfeld, Versprille, and the Boeing naming). handwiki.org
  6. “Elaine Cohen” (University of Utah geometric-design group; 2009 Pierre Bézier Award with Richard Riesenfeld). Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
  7. “Solid Modeling Solutions” (Boeing TIGER geometry group under Robert Blomgren; commercialization via Applied Geometry). Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
  8. “The History of Rhino” (Michael Gibson / Sculptura, the AGLib license, Dale Lear and openNURBS). McNeel Wiki. wiki.mcneel.com
  9. Franco Folini, “An Interview with Robert McNeel” (Rhino’s origins as an AutoCAD plug-in for marine design). francofolini.com, Mar. 14, 2007. francofolini.com
  10. “Autodesk” (incorporated Jan. 1982; AutoCAD released Dec. 1982 for the IBM PC). Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
  11. “Vectorworks” (MiniCAD by Diehl Graphsoft, 1985; renamed 1999; Nemetschek acquisition, 2000). Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
  12. “Autodesk Revit” (Charles River Software 1997 → Revit Technology Corp.; Autodesk acquisition, 2002). Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
  13. “Grasshopper 3D” (David Rutten / McNeel; released 2007 as Explicit History). Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
  14. “Adobe Photoshop” (Thomas & John Knoll; Adobe 1.0, 1990; layers in v3.0, 1994). Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
  15. “Google buys CIA-backed mapping startup” (Keyhole / EarthViewer, In-Q-Tel, 2004 acquisition). The Register, Oct. 28, 2004. theregister.com
  16. “History” (NeoGeo, Not a Number, the “Free Blender” campaign, 2002 open-source release). blender.org. blender.org
  17. “Unity (game engine)” (Over the Edge Entertainment, Copenhagen; launched at Apple WWDC, June 2005). Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
  18. “MicroStation” (Keith & Barry Bentley; Bentley Systems founded 1984; MicroStation shown 1985, MS-DOS 1986). Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
  19. Jeremiah Farmer, interview on the founding of Land F/X (David & Jeremiah Farmer; incorporated 1999). Drawn to Scale podcast, ep. 44. podbean.com
  20. “Autodesk 3ds Max” (Yost Group / Gary Yost; 3D Studio for DOS, 1990; 3D Studio MAX for Windows NT, 1996). Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
  21. “SketchUp” (@Last Software, 2000; Google acquisition 2006; Trimble 2012). Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
  22. “QGIS” (Gary Sherman, 2002; OSGeo project). Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
  23. “OpenStreetMap” (Steve Coast, UCL, 2004). Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
  24. “Adobe Illustrator” (released for Macintosh, 1987). Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
  25. “Adobe InDesign” (PageMaker successor; released 1999; vs. QuarkXPress). Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
  26. “Chaos (company)” (Mitev & Koylazov, Sofia; V-Ray released 2002). Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
  27. “Lumion” (Act-3D, Netherlands; first release December 2010). Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
  28. “Chaos and Enscape to Merge” (Enscape, Karlsruhe; 2022 merger). Chaos press release, Jan. 2022. chaos.com
  29. “Dimension 5 ships D5 Render” (first released 2021). CG Channel, May 2021. cgchannel.com
  30. “Adobe Premiere” (from SuperMac ReelTime; Adobe release December 1991). Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
  31. “Adobe After Effects” (CoSA, 1993; to Adobe via the 1994 Aldus acquisition). Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
  32. “Next Limit Technologies” (RealFlow; Madrid; founded 1998). Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
  33. “A short history of the Web” (Berners-Lee, HTML, announced 1991). CERN. home.cern
  34. “Brendan Eich” / “Håkon Wium Lie” (JavaScript, 1995; CSS proposed 1994, standardized 1996). Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org · Lie
  35. “Unreal Engine” (Tim Sweeney / Epic Games; debuted 1998; UE4 2014, UE5 2022). Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
  36. “Sketchpad” (Ivan Sutherland, 1963 MIT PhD thesis; ran on Lincoln Lab’s TX-2). Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
  37. “Autodesk Civil 3D” (first release, Civil 3D 2004). Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
  38. “Google Maps” (slippy maps, Feb. 2005) and “Leaflet” (Vladimir Agafonkin, 2011). Wikipedia. Maps · Leaflet