Strategies for Enhancing Landscape Architecture Research

Landscape architects have always felt that they benefit, in practice and education, from fundamental and applied research. The results of recent surveys among landscape architecture educators now make it possible to conduct a substantive discussion about the connections between research on the one hand and teaching and practice on the other. Such connections, it seems, are still weak. To develop these connections and be able to define landscape architecture as a discipline that relies on its own body of knowledge, it is important to build a common framework of theory and methods, and to start developing specific standards for academic quality assurance, such as the evaluation of research. Strategies to put these objectives into practice include organising conferences, colloquia and seminars on research and research methodologies, and developing network activities for academic exchange, including links with research communities outside landscape architecture.