Like most good ideas, this one showed when he should have been asleep.
Saba Farmand had been unemployed for a month. After working as an intern for a year, his ambition to become a landscape architect had stalled and his nights were restless.
Much like politics, a bleak economy can also make for strange bedfellows.
Paul Albi, a videographer who had worked for the Vancouver Whitecaps, couldn't find a job either.
"There was nothing in sight," Farmand says.
The duo had been friends since meeting at Pauline Johnson elementary in West Vancouver, and they stayed in touch while they each hunted for jobs.
"I couldn't fall asleep and it just came to me: 'We should combine our passions,'" Farmand recalls.
It was 2 a.m., Jan. 31 when the idea struck.
"I usually go to bed at 10 p.m. I'm a very early sleeper. Paul is the opposite, so at 2 a.m. I started texting him," Farmand says. "He pretty much wrote back saying: 'I'm game. Let's do this.'" The friends embarked on what became Surroundings, a documentary examining the way a landscape architect can weave a gathering place into a broader environment.
Farmand's ideas and Albi's camera take us from West Vancouver's waterfront to a Richmond playground to a skate park sheltered from Vancouver's elements by an overpass.
"It's kind of a blessing in disguise that we both got laid off at the same time," Farmand says. "We were able. .. to make something that's never been done before."
Farmand studied architectural history at the University of Victoria before moving into landscape architecture at UBC.
"The more I learned about it the more interesting it seemed," Farmand says.
The landscape architect needs to account for social, economic, and environmental factors when doing any design, as well as considering the natural geology and ecology of the area.
"It's like a puzzle," he says. "You really have to have a broad understanding of all the factors that influence a specific site."
Despite the deliberate decisions made by landscape architects, the work is rarely acknowledged, Farmand says.
"People often go to these parks or plazas - they don't realize that someone designed them, let alone the really strong themes that they wanted to bring into these designs."
Surroundings attempts to show the viewer both the detail and the scale of those projects.
"The main goal of the video was to promote the profession of landscape architecture because it's such a critical profession in terms of, again, creating our surroundings," Farmand says.
The funding for the project was non-existent.
"It was completely pro bono, volunteer, so we had to make lots of sacrifices. I did it for the love of landscape architecture, to promote the profession. Paul wanted to do it because he's into design and just wanted to build up his portfolio," he says.
After beginning the documentary, Farmand realized that failing to finish might result in the obliteration of his fledgling career.
"I had already reached out to many high-profile landscape architects and told them what I'm doing and gotten them to take time away from their busy schedules to work with me," he says. "The landscape architecture community's so small, and these are all people who I'd really, potentially love to work for one day. I didn't want to make it look like I'm a flake."
The documentary spends time at the Granite Assemblage in West Vancouver with local landscape architect Don Vaughan, as well as Garden City Park in Richmond with Jeff Cutler.
Cutler's interview is particularly intriguing, as he talks about incorporating children's ideas into the playground's designs.
Bordered by a licorice forest of red poles, the playground features water streaming down a constructed channel, past the mudflats, and into a pond.
Despite some interesting interviews, Farmand wasn't quite sure what to do with Surroundings when it was over.
"From the beginning we just intended it to be a video that we just throw on YouTube or whatever," he says.
But after looking over the footage, Farmand decided they could be a little more ambitious, and tried to work out a deal with Shaw TV.
"It took me a few emails of nagging them: 'Have you looked at our proposal?' 'Have you looked at our proposal?' They never really got back to me until the fifth email," he says.
The series is set to premiere on Shaw at midnight on Sept. 16.
Farmand made the video to throw a spotlight on an overlooked profession, but he also made Surroundings in the hopes of landing a job.
"The motive for making this video, kind of a sneaky one that I didn't tell people outright, was also to network for myself, promote myself and get my name out there within the landscape architecture community," he says.
"Right around the time the video came to completion, I just started a new job at a landscape architecture firm."
