Firstly, I would like to reflect upon my fabulous team members and the tremendous effort we all put into this assignment.

I feel that the team worked so well together. There were hardly any disagreements at all, and if there were (mainly earlier on when changes were being finalised on the model), rather than plainly objecting to change, more appropriate alternatives were put on the table. We all had a common objective, and were able to work professionally and promptly (great work over the holiday break guys!) to finish this assignment before the due date... well almost.

My role as the landscape architect was to enhance the appearance and function of the surrounding landscape. Before commencing any design changes, the site was essentially bare, apart from a few tall mature trees.

I felt it was important to incorporate soft and hard landscaping, to create comfortable outdoor entertaining areas that could be utilised and enjoyed all year round. Karl our lead architect, designed cascading outdoor decks, which I planted out with trees and shrubs, and also included an in-ground swimming pool. Swales and berms were added to the site to alleviate southerly winds and create privacy to the north, facing the street. The addition of a front courtyard would hopefully attract people to sit out the front of the house in winter and enjoy the northerly sun.

There were only a handful of changes made to the landscaping, but hopefully these changes added value to the site, and complimented changes that my other team mates made.

The success of this assignment did not happen by chance. There was a structured timetable and plan of events set in place before commencing work which led to our success.

Team Amazing was ready to start the assignment right from the word go, but unfortunately BIM did not work as well as we had all hoped. We could not access BIM from home which was quite frustrating, and spent many hours in the computer ‘cave’ at uni trying to solve the problem. With little success working with BIM, we decided to use Andrew’s ArchiCad model, and share the changes through Dropbox, this worked really well for us. As soon as one person finished the changes to the model, photos and updates were added to our blog and Flickr, and passed on to the next person who easily accessed the file through Dropbox.

This communication project, although fairly simple, was by no means an easy task. As always the more people involved in a project the more complicated it can become, the greater the possibility of it either going pear shaped or becoming a complete success. There are always going to be problems, disagreements or lack of enthusiasm from team members along the way. But in the case of team Amazing, we all equally contributed to the success of this assignment.

Go Team Amazing!