A conversation on education

Book chapter, 2018

Landscape architecture today is becoming increasingly professionalized as a quasi-global profession—not least through the successful expansion of academic research efforts within the discipline. This includes the kinds of effort to which this volume as a whole contributes, and this chapter broadens our understanding of the institutional structures within which we operate. Indeed, education may be one of the most important realms for the engagement and transmission of knowledge that moves back and forth and connects practice and research in intricate ways—with the added benefit that education remains a dialogical and personal setting for exchange, not least in studio-driven design programmes. We therefore have asked significant educators from Landscape Architecture programmes in Europe and North America to reflect on the tensions and challenges the profession currently faces, and on what we can do to prepare new generations of landscape architects who are now part of the educational system or will be so in the future. Moreover, we wished to inspire a discussion of how the aesthetic and ethical dimensions of landscape architecture potentially impact on the discipline, and of the role they should play in future landscape architecture education.