IN-PERSON: Applying Education

Abstract

Landscape architecture students are at the forefront of improving the environment for future generations. In their professional career, they will potentially oversee projects that deal with contemporary issues such as the crises in climate change and biodiversity loss, heritage and identity, and Indigenous matters. The Land|Terre Design Research Network (LT DRN) was formed in 2018 to create a platform for the exchange of teaching and research in Canada and is positioned to take leadership and reflect on topics related to the natural and cultural environment for a more diverse and sustained future. In 2022, the network invited nine landscape architecture professors across Canada to coordinate their design studios using the common lens of an optimistic re-emergence. The Studio Problématique brief provided a general guide for instructors yet left the site choice and pedagogical approaches open. Following Graeme Wynn’s argument for an alliance of critique, resistance, and “quest for alternative possibilities,” this paper scrutinizes course materials distributed to students for keywords and narratives of hope before comparing the visual output generated by students. Researchers will prepare a map showing sites across the country and demonstrate site diversity and pedagogical approaches. Next, the researchers will compare site analysis drawings to find comparisons and contradictions in the context, scale, location, concerns, and methodologies. Finally, the researchers will compare two projects that used similar analytical methods in radically different regions to present common themes in visualization in landscape architecture in Canada. The paper presentation will close with a reflection on the experience of the studio leaders and the extent to which they modified their approach to teaching with an optimistic lens.