Category: A 50-year Journey to Discover a Fun, Comfortable Way to Learn Landscape Architectural Design

For many years I was convinced, and shared with my students, my belief that by the time they entered university, whether from a small town or a metropolitan city, they had all the experiences they needed to be a good, if not a great designer. Flannery O’Connor did me one better. He “said that enough…

Let’s start with your introduction to landscape, architectural, or interior design. Professional university design programs so often adhere to the old adage that, like medicine, for something to be good for you it has to taste bad? I am not alone when I talk about my anxiety-ridden first semesters in landscape architecture. The feelings of…

The shift from learning design as geometry, design jargon, and a focus on things to learning design based on reading, writing, and storytelling brings with it two benefits. First, learning design here is not treated as something new, something you’ve never done before but is based upon existing knowledge and experiences. As a result, learning…

If you are interested in purchasing a copy of “Landscape Architecture as Storytelling” go to the Routledge Publishing website and use discount code EFL02. It is valid until 30 September 2023 for 20% off. Learning to be a professional in most areas of expertise will likely find you experiencing extended periods of angst and anxiety…

Part Four introduces a three-step design process. In it, you, as the designer-author, write a first- or second-person narrative of someone or group experiencing your design. Yes, I am aware you do not have a design at this point. Yes, asking you to write a short narrative is odd but you’ll come to find the…

I hope that all who have discovered this unpacking of storytelling, storyboard approach to landscape, architectural, and interior design are enjoying it. When we consider landscapes (or architecture or interiors) as texts, designers as authors of those texts, and the end-users as the readers of those texts, good storytelling becomes good design. A summary of…

There I was in my first design studio with my twenty, or so, new classmates, all eager to become a professional landscape architectural designer. Given a few mimeographed handouts (yes it was that long ago) we were asked to design a residence for a family of four. There I was believing I’d never designed anything…

This is the first in a series of 38 installments introducing and exploring a fun, comfortable way to learn architectural, landscape architectural, and interior design. Drawn from the recently released Landscape as Storytelling (2022, Routledge), the approach is based upon how we learned to read, write, and, more importantly, tell stories. Everyone is an accomplished…