It serves as a partial determinant for admission to the professional program, and with a decreasing number being admitted each year, the class atmosphere has become more competitive and grade-focused than I would like.
Landscape architecture is both science and art.
And while beginning students understand that their education will largely be in technical skills and objective knowledge, learning the art of landscape architecture is more humanistic, involving dialogue, debate, the analysis of thought, and no small amount of frustration. Where this approach becomes fully evident is during the first structured design project review, usually occurring in early November. In the standard scenario, the review setting has four sets of actors, each with a particular role. The first, in order of importance, are the students themselves, who are charged with clearly stating the driving concept behind their design to the audience, and presenting their spatial resolution as an outgrowth of that concept. The third group of actors is invited outside reviewers, brought in to provide a fresh perspective.