Training the next generation

Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Department of Landscape at the University of Sheffield.

Since it opened its doors 50 years ago, the University of Sheffield’s Department of Landscape has become one of the leading schools of landscape architecture in the world, renowned for its excellent teaching and world-leading research.

In 1968, with six students and two members of staff, it was established as the first independent Department of Landscape in the UK. Since then thousands of students have passed through its doors in the pursuit of a landscape architecture education. Today it hosts more than 400 students from 21 countries, 14 academic staff, four university teachers, five research associates and seven professional service staff.

A student practices the use of an oculus

© The University of Sheffield

The department’s ethos remains similar to its founding principles, committed to:

–– Training the next generation of leading landscape architects

–– Producing world-leading research that changes policy and influences practice

–– Collaborating with agencies and industry that create positive social and environmental change both nationally and internationally.

Teaching

New approaches and methods of teaching were adopted by Professor Arnold Weddle from the outset. In his history of the department, Dr. Jan Woudstra describes how the development of the ‘Sheffield method’ – landscape architecture taught by project work – was transformative in its day. This has continued to the present day with all modules organised around a real site, and in many cases involving aspects of a live project with local community and agency representatives.

© The University of Sheffield

Innovation and ‘research-led teaching’ remain at the heart of today’s two undergraduate and three postgraduate courses. New technologies – including drones, VR and 360 degree photography – are used in classes whenever appropriate, while module programmes are continually refined through new understandings derived from research and scholarship. The department has also had to re-think how it references design teaching to cultural norms when confronted by such a huge variety of international students.

The studio remains central to the learning experience of students, enabling creative exchange and peer learning. Alongside discipline-specific learning, the department places great emphasis on developing students’ transferrable skills that will enable them to be successful in their future careers. The aim is for students to be creative and confident thinkers and communicators as well as competent practitioners.

Students work in light and airy studios

© The University of Sheffield

As with Weddle’s first course, teaching is concerned with delivering skills across the breadth of the discipline and through academics, teachers and visiting practitioners addressing landscape design, planning, management, science and urban design. This multi-disciplinary perspective is facilitated by a large and diverse academic staff, spanning the arts and humanities, social sciences and ecological sciences.

Research

The ‘Sheffield method’ was unusual for its time, with Weddle also concerned about the ‘need for substantial research efforts to provide an adequate basis for teaching’. With the advent of the Research Excellence Framework (REF) and its antecedents from the 1990s, in a research intensive university such as Sheffield, research is a core part of the department’s culture. It focuses on the interactions between society, culture, nature and practice that shape our environment, and how these research findings can be applied in practice and real-world solutions developed.

Landscape architecture is taught by project work

© The University of Sheffield

As landscape architecture is inherently multi and inter disciplinary, the department has long-standing collaborative relationships with academics from diverse disciplines and end-users, including policymakers, commercial and third sector organisations. More than 75 per cent of the department’s research outputs were ranked as world leading or internationally excellent in the most recent (2014) Research Excellence Framework. The department aims to consolidate and develop this position as a research leader in landscape architecture, locally, nationally and globally, and deliver outstanding research that is highly relevant to social, cultural and environmental issues outside the academy. The department’s research is structured into three clusters – Designed Ecology, Place, Inclusion and Equity and Creative Spatial Practices – and staff often move freely between them.

Designed Ecology

Designed Ecology is a researchinformed, evidence-led, and designcentered approach to applying ecological ideas and concepts to create healthy cities and livable places. It takes a fresh new perspective on ‘Green Infrastructure’, combining a focus on urban social, environmental and economic sustainability, with a core concern with aesthetic quality, human satisfaction, and richness of experience.

A live project in Sheffield has now matured

© The University of Sheffield

Integrating viewpoints and insight from pure science, social science, arts and humanities, and engineering, the Designed Ecology Cluster aims to place the advancement and promotion of richly vegetated urban environments at all scales and contexts as the key to sustainable urban futures.

Place, Inclusion and Equity

The Place, Inclusion and Equity research is dedicated to promoting environmental equity and social cohesion. It aims to shape culturally and socially inclusive places through landscape planning, design and management. It aims to understand how people’s health and wellbeing, throughout their lives, can be both positively and negatively impacted by aspects of space and landscape.

Sheffield professors were appointed planting design and horticultural consultants for the Olympic Park. London, 2008

© The University of Sheffield

Creative Spatial Practices

The Creative Spatial Practices group focuses on the role of visual and material arts, culture and technologies in conceiving environmental and social landscape change. The group researches past, present and future cultures and technologies of landscape architecture and forges links between studies in creative experimental design, planning and management practices.

As part of a new initiative, Landscape will be featuring work and news about education in each issue. If you are an accredited university or other provider with events and important news for members, please get in touch. Email:landscape@ darkhorsedesign.co.uk