Sustainability as a framework for Landscape Architectural Education

Abstract

While landscape students and young professionals are increasingly aware of issues related to sustainability and keen to address them, the lack of effective disciplinary and pedagogical frameworks for engaging with these complex issues makes it difficult for them to get beyond short term, superficial design responses. This paper reviews the University of Hong Kong, Division of Landscape Architecture’s new Tropical Futures Initiative, a set of multi-year experiential design studios that aim to teach landscape architectural skills and knowledge by focusing on sustainability. These courses are situated within some of the least economically developed areas of Southeast Asia (Laos, Myanmar, Indonesia), landscapes that are completely unfamiliar to students (to avoid reliance on preconception, assumption or proprietary responses). Students are challenged to work directly with indigenous community groups, experts, government agencies, and NGOs, to address issues of development and sustainability, e.g. exposure to the impacts of climate change, rapid urbanisation, commercialisation, environmental degradation resource depletion, infrastructural development etc., and to engage issues of governance, land ownership, labour rights, public health, gender roles, etc. They are required to generate their own data on existing landscape and human systems, deploy ethnographic as well as design research methods to map resources, document behaviours and record narratives insitu. Drawing on core disciplinary skills, students develop systems-based landscape strategies and proposals which are relevant to community and environment, and then to present the information and ideas generated to the local partners to support their projects and campaigns. This teaching approach has helped landscape students to gain a greater understanding of interrelated sustainability issues and to generate and advocate for grounded, resilient design interventions. Ultimately this approach invites students to consider the nature of the profession and the roles that landscape architects might play in helping communities achieve more sustainable futures. This paper outlines the studios and debates the core pedagogical innovations, followed by a reflection on the struggles, successes, and potential future directions.