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Program
Mission and Objectives
Program
Mission and Objectives of the MLA (three year) First Professional
Degree
The mission of
the department is to advance and integrate knowledge in
the art, science and values of Landscape Architecture and
Environmental Planning; to prepare students for the effective
implementation of a more ecologically thoughtful and socially
equitable use of the landscape and natural resources through
landscape plans and designs at scales from garden and site
to city and region. Such planning and design will be increasingly
informed by natural sciences and environmental experiences,
will place a high value on the quality of both the wild
and constructed landscape and will expect active involvement
of its citizenry. We will educate both professionals and
citizens to continually learn, embrace, and apply natural
processes, human values, justice and art to environmental
planning and landscape design.
Effective implementation
of plans and designs requires professionals with finely
honed disciplinary literacy within an interdisciplinary
context. In Berkeley’s educational tradition we emphasize
the following because we believe these skills are essential
for students to become professionals who can effectively
implement the landscape changes and the landscape preservation
needed today and in the near future:
- Imagine landscapes. Each of us needs to be able to visualize
landscapes as they are and as we imagine them to be; through
seeing and communicating we learn to view landscapes with
curiosity and creativity; we learn to visualize the complexity
of the landscape through spatial models; and to think
spatially.
- Understand natural processes. We learn how natural processes
shape the landscape and can shape human settlement; and
how humans can adapt to natural processes instead of making
attempts to control them. This type of learning particularly
relies on field study.
- Know precedents for landscape processes, built landscapes,
and institutions that create landscapes.
- Understand how behavior and human values shape the
landscape.
- Analyze and synthesize all the above in landscape designs
and planning proposals that are innovative and, when necessary,
challenge the conventional.
- Direct public discussion to include landscape values
including health, beauty, creativity, and fulfillment
in decision-making in additional to narrow economic values
prevalent in most decisions about our physical environments.
- Make critical decisions that advance an ecological
democracy and that create poetry of nature in projects
large and small.
Objectives:
Develop landscape design and design development adeptness
at the site and regional scale with particular focus on
the integration of ecological factors, i.e. plant materials,
climate, geology, and hydrology.
Provide proficiency
in reading and shaping landform and design concentrating
specifically on the dynamics of water at the site scale.
Develop design technology skills focusing specifically on
designs that are derivative of such technology in detail
and as constructed elements in the landscape.
Develop and cultivate
graphic communication skills concentrating on imagining
and representing the landscape through computer applications
and drawing.
Develop a critical
proficiency in landscape architecture history and theory.
Provide an integrated
approach in plant ecology and planting design.
Several concerns
have emerged that are particular to the LAEP department
that distinguishes the program’s mission and goals.
- To articulate and expand the critical discourse in
the realm of social factors and public awareness.
- To advocate for a strong ethic of democracy for the
public landscape.
- To advocate for environmental needs and satisfaction
of populations who suffer from inequities of natural resources
in access and distribution.
- To promote the protection of the environment coupled
with economic development that sustains natural resources.
- To integrating scientific information at every level
of land use decision-making.
- To recognize that landscape ecology is in the process
of changing from a science, which was used predominantly
for the analysis and protection of “natural landscapes”
into a discipline, which actively develops new forms of
urban and cultural landscapes.
In all areas of
teaching and research our goal is to infuse students with
social awareness, resource conserving attitudes, state of
the art technology, and the beauty inherent in the making
of landscapes. These goals recognize our concern with the
needs of all segments of society and with the broader implications
on the professional work in terms of the social and natural
environments. Specific values and ethics are articulated
through the program’s objectives:
- Sustainability: the interface and confrontation, and
equilibrium of humans and their natural environment, democracy;
and
- Advocacy: environmental justice, diversity, and the
understanding and validation through planning and design,
for the existence of diverse cultural groups as articulated
through the program’s goals.
Approaching landscape
from the position of a scientific art form creates a context
for broader interpretations. We value this breadth and distinction,
which enables synthesis and integration of ideas as a primary
asset in the design of the landscape. This attitude fosters
collaborative and interdisciplinary approaches to landscape
architecture but also allows individual expression and debate.
In response to
this dynamic character of the built public landscape, high
value is placed on the diverse backgrounds and research
that our faculty provides. To accomplish the LAEP mission
and objectives, a diverse faculty enables the synthesis
of these ideas and distinct areas of research primarily
through collaboration and interdisciplinary studies. Studio
teaching and faculty and student research standards are
high which guarantee the articulation of new and emerging
directions in landscape architecture and environmental planning
in advancing the profession as society’s attitudes,
needs, and values change.
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