Joseph Brooks - Land Collective Blog #3

Land Collective: Escapades


2.20.2026


The studio is extra busy as of late. I am lending a hand on visualization efforts attached to Land Collective's New Plan for Pennsylvania Avenue, which has my plate full. Fortunately, I am beginning to more adequately grasp the intricacies of constructing evocative digital renders to an extent far beyond what we were taught at LSU. For our renders, we are using Enscape to take snapshots of a Rhino model developed in collaboration with other consultants on our project team. What's wonderful about Enscape (and other rendering tools in the Chaos library, like V-Ray) is that for all its clunkiness, it makes it incredibly easy to postprocess images manually in Photoshop. This allows a user to exert their artistic hand over an image that would otherwise be too complex and muddy to be augmented after it is rendered. Enscape outputs alpha, shadow, and object ID masks, all of which can be used to further adjust image content. I'm having lots of fun compositing caustics, atmospheric elements, signage, and more intricate textures over my renders and look forward to sharing my workflow when I return to school. No photos for now, as the contents of the project are still under wraps.

Ms. Mittens, our office cat, is not liking the cold. She has been curled up in my lap every day since last Tuesday. Selfishly, I'm loving it, but I worry she may be getting seasonal depression. Thoughts and prayers.


Ref. 1 CAD jockeys.

Finally, I visited the LSU Boston Campus (as they're calling themselves) last weekend as part of a Valentine's Day trip! It was great to check in with Clara, Jack, and Reid. We went for dim sum, listened to great music, and immersed ourselves in the Irish culture of Boston (which means we went to the pub every night). Boston is a fantastic city with an incredible legacy of public art, graphics, and social-spatial design. There was lots of Helvetica font (my favorite) and I even found a fleeting piece of sound art that I studied way back in Kevin Benham's studio.


Ref. 2 A defunct Orange Line train sits in a subway tunnel.


Ref. 3 Octopus attack!


Ref. 4 Sound art at Kendall Square.

That's all for now. I've got my nose to the grindstone, but will continue to keep you all updated. 

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