Landscape Architecture Students Research Articles

Promoting Wellness for Architecture and Landscape Architecture Students: Lessons Learned from a Mixed Method Study

Background: Universities face increasing pressure to model healthy campuses in response to the ongoing mental health crisis, yet limited research explores ways to improve student wellness. Aim: This study explored strategies architecture and landscape architecture students adopt to overcome stress and solutions for promoting wellness in a school of architecture. Methods: The study utilized a convergent mixed methods research design. First, design students (n = 277) responded to an online wellness survey to explore how they lower stress during their academic studies. Second, semi-structured interviews (n = 37) uncovered students’ coping mechanisms to overcome stress during their academic studies and recommendations for creating a more healthful environment. Results: Strategies students most often adopted to lower stress were socializing, sleeping, exercising, taking personal time, spending time outdoors, and improving time management. Students recommended improving communication and time management, a sense of community, and building a health and wellness culture. Findings were translated into design considerations for creating healthier places on college campuses. Conclusions: Design students employ a variety of strategies to overcome the debilitating effects of mental distress. Policies and campus planning efforts should work toward student-informed solutions to promote wellness.

Mental Health Challenges in Architecture and Landscape Architecture Students

Background: College students are experiencing increasing levels of stress, anxiety, and depression, but little research exists on factors weakening the mental health of design students.Aim: This study investigates the prevalence and precursors of mental health challenges among architecture and landscape architecture students.Methods: This study used a convergent mixed-methods research design with three data collection methods: The Depression and Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS-21; n = 399 students), an online wellness survey (n = 269), and semi-structured interviews (n = 37).Results: Findings reveal that 33%, 46%, and 33% of students screened positive for moderate to extremely severe levels of depression, anxiety, and stress, respectively. The leading factors elevating stress included school deadlines and schedule, workload demands or amount of work outside of class, inadequate sleep, and time spent at work. Negative behaviors due to stress were discussed, including neglect of self-care (e.g., poor sleep patterns, eating habits, and physical inactivity), inability to focus, emotional instability, and social withdrawal.Conclusions: This study underscores mental health concerns among design students and identifies potential factors that contribute to unhealthy habits and compromise academic performance, including pedagogical approaches, learning and teaching culture, studio environment, and lifestyle choices.

Transfer of Social Uses, Meanings and Values through Landscape Design; Case of Karagöz Square

In this study, how landscape architecture students associate the traces of the past of a given site with their conceptual approaches and spatial components in the design process is discussed. Karagöz Square, located in the city center of Trabzon, has undergone dramatic and mostly negative changes from the past to the present in functional, visual and semantic terms. the area which is under urban transformation process in order to revitalize, to make it a part of urban life and in this context to regain its old functions has been given to students as the subject of design within the scope of Environmental Design Project IV course. Within the scope of this paper, how students investigated the past of design area and physical and social dimensions of collective memory, how they reflected on their conceptual approaches and main design decisions, and then through which spatial components and usage types these decisions were reflected on projects are determined and explained. In a design group of 9 students, 5 designs, conceptual approaches of which were based on the history of the city and the design area and traces left in collective memory were discussed in detail. As a result of the content analysis of the presentations and reports of the students it was determined that some students were inspired by the past functional (such as socialization) and semantic dimensions of the area (such as entertainment and play) or the physical components of the area (such as olive trees, amusement park-entertainment equipment). The other students were inspired by the historical features of the city of Trabzon (the empires of the past) or the traces of cultural features in the society such as Trabzonspor and determined their design approaches based on these. In line with these, spatial components and usage types-activities in the final products are detailed in this study. How collective memory can be a tool for determining conceptual approaches in landscape design is also discussed.

Plants in Design

Plants in Design: A Guide to Designing With Southern Landscape Plants Brad E. Davis and David Nichols. University of Georgia Press, 2021. ![Figure][1]</img> I have taught introductory plants classes to landscape architecture students for ten years and have always struggled to find a good

The effects of the planned M2 motorway

The SaveGREEN INTERREG project aims to help conserve or improve ecological corridors through integrated planning and to raise awareness of the different types of appropriate mitigation measures. In connection with the SaveGREEN project and in the framework of the university educational program of landscape architecture students, we prepared a complex landscape assessment and landscape development plan for the planned M2 border area. The SaveGREEN project builds on the results of the TRANSGREEN, ConnectGREEN and HARMON DTP projects. The project focuses on the study areas of the partner countries: the Alpine-Carpathian corridor, the South-Western Carpathians, the Zakarpattya, Beskid, Lyulin and Balkan Mountains and the critical ecological corridors of the planned M2 area in Hungary, which are most affected by transport infrastructure and unsustainable land use. In our study, we present a complex assessment of the Hungarian study area, with a special focus on the assessment of ecological corridors crossing the route of the planned M2 motorway.

What can first-year undergraduate students "envision" from a pandemic?

The COVID-19 pandemic has further compounded the inherent complexities of design pedagogy. At the same time, offering an online teaching method made it imperative to incorporate the pandemic's implications in the design process upon experiencing its adverse impacts. This study investigates landscape architecture students' design approaches and understandings in a real-world studio based on the before and after COVID-19 scenarios. The findings show that most students designed multi-functional public open spaces before the COVID-19 period while they envisioned post-pandemic uses after the COVID-19 period. The study results not only offer insights for online or distance learning for design students, but also prepare design-oriented solutions for the pandemic-related episodes.

Adaptation and application of low impact urban design and development (LIUDD) in Resistencia, Argentina

Low impact urban design and development (LIUDD) emerged as an approach promoting urban development while reducing its negative impact on the natural environment, especially on the natural hydrology cycle. While the object being concerned (i.e., the natural hydrology cycle) is universal, the processes and steps taken for reducing urban development negative impact on it as promoted by LIUDD are supposedly contextualized to the place where LIUDD is conceived, that is New Zealand. This article explores the adaptation and application of LIUDD done jointly by Argentinian and Indonesian landscape architecture students when intervening a naturally flooded area and designing a flood park in Resistencia, Chaco, Argentina. This article was written through a qualitative and descriptive research. The design process and outcomes were analysed using the LIUDD process and design principles as the framework. It is found that designing properly following the LIUDD process requires extensive data on the natural environment that are not always easily available for the Resistencia context. However, the LIUDD design principles are rather universal and can be adapted to the Resistencia context.

Captured Moments of Landscape Metamorphosis

Landscape architecture students at the University of Ljubljana were encouraged to prepare temporal series of landscape and plant drawings to sharpen their sensitivity to changes in the perception of a land motive and vegetation morphology. Students chose a particular motive, defined the frame of the drawing, and identified characteristic plants on site. The motives were sketched several times during the year to portray seasonal changes. Specific environmental conditions (fog, rain, sunny day) were captured in drawings, and in the case of plants, drawings revealed the transitions of selected physiological events (budding, flowering, fruiting). These transformations were discussed in connection with landscape perception and as a tool in the design process.

The attitudes of landscape architecture students towards distance and face-to-face education methods and the effects of the two education methods on academic achievement in the project course.

This study aimed to compare the achievements of the students who attended the Environmental Design Project course at Karadeniz Technical University (KTU) in various years with the face-to-face (FE) and distance (OE) education methods. The study was conducted with 130 students. In the initial stage, ANOVA was conducted to determine whether there was a difference between student attitudes towards FE and OE methods in the Environmental Design Project studio. In the second stage, the research problem, namely “Does the implementation of landscape architecture environmental design project instruction with FE and OE methods affect the academic achievements of the students? was investigated and a quasi-experimental study with a control group was conducted on the achievement test (50 questions) results. The achievement test was applied to the students who took environmental design lessons for one semester (14 weeks) with both methods before the 14-week semester (pre-test) and after the semester (post-test). There was no statistical difference between the pre-test scores of both groups (p > 0.05), while there was a difference (p < 0.05) between the post-test scores. This finding demonstrated that there was a significant difference between the effects of these two methods on the academic success of the students.

Gender‐Based Differences in Academic Achievement in a University Design Program

AbstractThere is a significant amount of research into gender differences in academic performance in the science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) fields. This has identified important differences between the academic achievement of men and women as measured through grade point averages and time to completion. However, the specific STEM fields of design have not been thoroughly explored. This research investigates the long‐term academic performance of a large group of architecture, industrial design, interior design and landscape architecture students at a major Australian university. The study followed the progress of 472 students over an 11‐year period. In most fields the academic achievement of students follows expected patterns; the difference in academic grades for male and female students reduces over time. However, in interior design, there are significant differences that increase with time, to the favour of women. A range of social, cultural and contextual influences are discussed including the signature pedagogy of the design studio and the hidden curriculum of design education.

AN EVALUATION FROM CONCEPT TO DESIGN PRODUCT WITH ICONIC AND ANALOGICAL FORM PRODUCTION METHODS IN BASIC DESIGN EDUCATION

Aim: In design-related professional disciplines, basic design education has an efficient and effective role in terms of understanding and experiencing the design process for the students. The Basic Design course is the basic tool in the realization of the design practice as an action that develops creativity and problem solving skills. Aim: The aim of this course is to develop the skills of analysing the given problem and developing creative thinking skills in order to realize the design action, to produce a form through different methods and to reach a unique concrete result. In this context, it is aimed to reveal the design process that starts with tangible or intangible source of inspiration and reaches a creative concrete design product. Method: From this point of view, we analysed the final works of Artvin Çoruh University Faculty of Art and Design Department of Landscape Architecture students created by iconic and analogical methods, by using DOMINANCE -UNITY and BALANCE principles one of the basic design principles explained to the students within the scope of Basic Design-I course. Results: As a result, at the end of the semester, it was observed that most of the students were successful in the course, and it was understood that the product they produced increased their motivation to research, questioning, problem solving and producing original products via questionnaire. Conclusion: It is thought that the iconic and analogical methods used in this study in the form generation process contribute to the students' production of original designs, and these methods will also be useful in revealing original designs in all design-related courses, especially in project courses.

Decoding and recoding informal settlements in a design studio: an overview of the world studio project

The world is experiencing a surge in its urban population accompanied by rapidly advancing urbanization processes. Contemporary cities are witnessing the rise of numerous urban and social problems, leading, in turn, to the emergence of informal settlements. In response, computational and parametric resources are increasingly being adopted to create innovative and effective approaches to urban planning and design. These resources can be used in informal settlements to improve urban quality without losing their essential features. This paper describes the World Studio, a teaching experience that began in 2017 and continues in the present day, in which undergraduate architecture and landscape architecture students learn how to use shape grammars and parametric tools to design for informal settlements in international contexts (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and Ahmedabad, India, to date).

Applying FABRIC as a Tool to Understanding Architectural and Landscape Icons in a Time of Travel Restrictions

Iconic architecture and landscape architecture are most often understood through photographic media that mediates between the idea and the reality for those learning to design. The drastic lockdown responses to COVID-19 and the limitations on local and international travel highlighted the importance of the visual and the potential of the virtual. However, visual media can also be understood as systems that go far beyond a strict representation of an object. In this climate where publicity, politics, and perception play ever more crucial roles, representations of iconic architecture and landscapes increasingly blur the boundaries between the imaginary and the tangible. This paper examines the experience of iconic architecture and landscape in four iconic European cities (Paris, Barcelona, Seville, and Lisbon) as seen through the eyes of fifty postgraduate architecture, interior architecture, and landscape architecture students from New Zealand. It compares their understanding of a building or landscape from its photographic image before engaging with the physical reality. Students were asked to first identify iconic architecture and landscape, then closely analyze and document the essential qualities which established its pre-eminence. A subsequent visit to each of the places provided the opportunity for comparison and the testing of the realities and fictions of the icons themselves. Our research finds that today’s architecture students are savvy and sophisticated consumers of technology. It also presents FABRIC (finding, assimilating, being, reflecting, introspecting, and concluding), a conceptual framework that offers additional scaffolding for educating design students through experiential learning in a time of travel restrictions.

A Spherical Video-Based Immersive Virtual Reality Learning System to Support Landscape Architecture Students’ Learning Performance during the COVID-19 Era

During the COVID-19 pandemic, campuses are closed, and many schools are forced to transition to online instruction. There are many problems in landscape architecture education during the pandemic such as students’ decreased attention, poor self-regulation, low proactivity, and difficulty in grading. In addition, situational effects are required for landscape architecture education, but online education lacks the necessary case scenarios for courses during the pandemic. In order to solve these problems, the present study adopted a more accessible, and interactive spherical video-based immersive virtual reality (SV-IVR) approach, developed a landscape architecture SV-IVR learning system, and conducted a quasi-experimental study to examine its effectiveness. The results indicated that the experimental group students showed more positive results in their learning achievements, learning attitudes, and self-regulation than the control group. Besides, it was found that students required more time to develop their self-efficacy and that this system would not have an effect on students’ cognitive load.

Embedding Sustainability in Interdisciplinary Pedagogy for Planning and Design Studios

Sustainability literacy should be embedded in built environment higher education. We explored the contribution of interdisciplinary studios to students’ sustainability literacy. We ran a studio with Urban Planning and Landscape Architecture students, focused on a coastal brownfield renewal in Victoria, Australia. Studio activities and assessments were designed based on constructivist and experiential learning principles. Students’ learning experiences were evaluated through surveys and focus group interviews, and analyzed against an integrated framework. Results show that simulating real-world situations, game-based and role-playing activities, and applying sustainability principles to a complex site encourage creativity, shared control, and negotiation, which foster experiential sustainability learning.

Reducing the Incidence of Skin Cancer through Landscape Architecture Design Education

There is a high and growing incidence of skin cancer associated with overexposure to the sun. Most of a person’s exposure occurs during their first eighteen years of life. While many children are taught to wear hats and sunscreen, studies indicate these are inadequate. There is a pressing need to improve the design of our landscapes to reduce exposure. Landscape architects can play a key role in driving this process, but only if they understand the factors determining sun protection behaviours among children in the landscape, and how to design for these. We introduced a systematic evidence-based teaching approach to landscape architecture students in New Zealand where the incidence of skin cancer is one of the highest in the world. In this paper, we describe the methods we used to integrate scientific information into a creative design process that included four design phases: (1) review, summary and translation of evidential theory into design guidelines; (2) inventory and analysis of existing schoolyard; (3) redesign of schoolyard; and (4) final design evaluation. We found this process was effective in developing student appreciation for the need to improve sun protection through design, for increasing their understanding of the evidential science, in addition to developing their ability to translate, often inaccessible, evidential data into its spatial form implications. Furthermore, the process led to a high degree of confidence and pride among many students as their resulting design solutions were not only supported by evidence but were often highly creative. Such evidence-based design courses are essential for preparing future landscape architects to design landscapes that significantly reduce the incidence and health effects of skin cancer.

Future Directions—Engaged Scholarship and the Climate Crisis

Climate change has the potential to disrupt ecosystem services and further exacerbate the effects of human activities on natural resources. This has significant implications for educational institutions and the populations they serve. As the current crop of landscape architecture students struggles to define its role within the climate crisis and its related social and political underpinnings, a core mission of colleges and universities moving forward should be to provide students with applied knowledge about how climate change affects the landscape. This goes beyond coursework in climate science or policy; for landscape architecture students to be leaders in the response to climate change, they need applied, practical skills. An ever-growing body of the literature focuses on landscape design strategies for climate change adaptation; however, few frameworks integrate these strategies with the hands-on experience students will need to face real-world challenges after graduation. Educational institutions have the potential to utilize their campuses as demonstration sites for applied ecosystem research programs and actively engage students with the design, implementation, politics, and ongoing stewardship of these landscapes. This paper uses a case study methodology to understand how experiential and public-engaged learning pedagogies contribute to student preparedness to address climate change. It examines three cases of engaged learning at the University of California, Davis campus and attributes their impact to intentional connections with research, to the delegation of responsibility; to the openness of spaces for experimentation, and to self-reflection that connects climate with everyday behavior. By promoting experiential learning programs that require students to actively use their heads and their hands to construct and sustainably manage their own campus landscapes, service-learning studios and internships can provide opportunities for students to address the real scenarios of climate crisis and resilience.

Application of the Semantic Network Method to Sightline Compensation Analysis of the Humble Administrator’s Garden

Traditional Chinese private gardens (TCPGs) are a special type of seventeenth century landscaped architectural space that exhibit high levels of spatial complexity and variety, which are attributed to its patterns of spatial organisation. Sightline designs in these gardens are unique and ingenious. To date, only a few theories have tried to explain their spatial qualities from the perspective of visual analysis. However, there is a lack of formal mathematical analysis of sightline design in relation to the spatial organisation in TCPGs. To achieve this, the paper presents a study of sightline compensation analysis for a typical TCPG (the Humble Administrator’s Garden) using the semantic network method. The semantic network model is established on two levels—spatial accessibility and superimposed sightline. Results of this study suggests that sightline compensation forms the circular spatial structure that spreads outwards from core spaces, and composes the mathematically key spatial sequence of the Humble Administrator’s Garden. The effect of sightline compensation also expands and composes the spatial structure of the garden, which creates the effect of endless views within the garden. This study provides a new method for analysing and understanding contemporary landscape architecture design, which potentially benefits landscape architecture practitioners, students and educators.

Connecting Māori Youth and Landscape Architecture Students through Participatory Design

As with many Indigenous cultures, the Māori connection to the land in Aotearoa New Zealand has been weakened by colonization, urbanization and other factors. In particular, Māori youth in their progressively technological world, experience a disconnection from their culture and their land (whenua). Using a participatory design method and designing with the land is proposed as a way to enable cultural reconnection through the reconstruction of identity. Developing ideas from community engagement and place-making with Indigenous groups, in this research landscape architecture students joined with Māori youth (rangatahi) attending an alternative education program to co-design a public community space. The article reflects on the benefits of the community-based participatory research methodology for both groups, including the development of an understanding of the importance of Indigenous knowledge and rebuilding connection to culture and land.

Understanding and Interpreting the Concept of Malaysian Garden Design: Experts Conferring

This paper sets out to define and describe the definition of the concept of the Malaysian Garden by referring to the landscape and garden experts in Malaysia. It will focus on the expert's understanding, knowledge and experience about this concept. Researchers used qualitative research methods that involved semi-structured in-depth interviews and observations. The respondents for this study are Malaysian Garden concept experts who have been certified by the National Landscape Department (NLD) of Malaysia, referring to the books published by them in 2009. At present, it is difficult to obtain a strong and firm Malaysian Garden concept definition. As a result of this study, all these experts provide different definitions. It is due to a different profession and work experience factors. In this study, the researchers have also gained their insights on the method of branding the concept, aiming to introduce it to local and global communities. Through this research, it helps the responsible party in creating this concept to understand better and be sensitive to the subject. However, further research should be carried out to enable the concept that has been created to satisfy all stakeholders. The study has stated an argument, why the Malaysian Garden concept is still not going to its branding. If it has been introduced to the public, we need to know how to uphold it as a national identity. This research paper will attract attention from stakeholders in Malaysia, industry players, academics and landscape architecture students.