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CONTEMPORARY LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE AS A WHOLE OF COMPETENCIES
Veselin Rangelov
Veselin Rangelov. (2022) Contemporary Landscape Architecture as a Whole of Competencies. World Science. 6(78). doi: 10.31435/rsglobal_ws/30122022/7903
https://doi .org/ 10.31435/rsglobal_ws/30122022/7903 08 December 2022 28 December 2022 30 December 2022
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CONTEMPORARY LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE AS A WHOLE OF COMPETENCIES
Veselin Rangelov
Ph.D., Assoc. Professor Faculty of Ecology and Landscape Architecture, University of Forestry Sofia, Bulgaria
DOI: https://doi.org/10.31435/rsglobal_ws/30122022/7903
ARTICLE INFO
ABSTRACT
Received: 08 December 2022 Accepted: 28 December 2022 Published: 30 December 2022
KEYWORDS
Landscape Architect, Education, Competencies.
Today, in the term "landscape architect", we rather refer to a set of different professions, which in their synergistic connection give the appearance of modern landscape architecture. All these sub-professions from day to day are becoming more and more comprehensive and, accordingly, more and more independent, requiring their own set of competencies, and this necessitates the profiling of the educational process so that it meets the new needs of the labor market.
Citation: Veselin Rangelov. (2022) Contemporary Landscape Architecture as a Whole of Competencies. World Science. 6(78). doi: 10.31435/rsglobal_ws/30122022/7903
Copyright: © 2022 Veselin Rangelov. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Introduction.
Dynamic changes in every sphere of life lead to rapid changes in people's professional sphere as well. Today, we are witnessing disappearing professions and those that, in a short period of time, become essential for human life. Certainly, the profession of "Landscape Architect" can be defined as a profession of the future and in the context of global climate change is becoming increasingly important for the survival of humanity, but this also brings with it a number of challenges to the volume and content of the services provided. For the dynamic changes in every sphere, the development in the field of information technology plays an essential role. They optimize technological processes and are a powerful generator for the development of any field, including Landscape Architecture with all its branches and currents.
Discussion.
Today, in the term "landscape architect", we rather refer to a set of different professions, which in their synergistic connection give the appearance of modern landscape architecture. All these sub-professions from day to day are becoming more and more comprehensive and, accordingly, more and more independent, requiring their own set of competencies, and this necessitates the profiling of the educational process so that it meets the new needs of the labor market.
With the amount of education received, the landscape architect can practice various professions:
• Administrator;
• Designer of garden and park objects;
• Project manager;
• BIM- manager
• Visualizer of park planning projects;
• Builder of garden and park objects;
• Producer of decorative vegetation;
• Trader of decorative vegetation;
• Scientific worker;
• Teacher;
• And others.
All these variants of the "Landscape Architect" profession require a variety of competencies or a combination of several different ones. For example, the administrator needs solid knowledge in the field of regulations and legal relationships in the investment process. The designer, in addition to the administrator's competencies, must also have solid technical skills, skills in the field of modern design, as well as knowledge of modern construction technologies. The builder, in addition to modern construction technologies, must also know the entire construction process in detail, without needing in-depth knowledge of regulations or modern design. All those listed up to here have to have serious training in information technology, and in particular in BIM (Building Informational Modeling) or SIM (Building Information Technology) [6], which, with an EU Directive, must be implemented throughout the European Union until 2027. The producer of decorative vegetation, on the other hand, needs completely different competences from those listed above, and above all, in-depth knowledge of the morphology and physiology of plant species, as well as modern technologies for the production of planting material. Design also plays an essential role here, but in a completely different aspect than the one mentioned above. The trader must obviously be prepared in the field of marketing and market economy. The scientific worker, to monitor and create modern theories and concepts, on which the profession can stand, and the teacher, to develop a pedagogical approach, with which to introduce and build new personnel, which will probably in the near future create prerequisites for even more large-scale development of the profession, and why not create new sub-professions.
Conclusions.
This unequivocally shows that modern education in Landscape Architecture must be based on at least two educational modules: one that provides fundamental knowledge and one that profiles the future specialist and provides him with all the necessary knowledge for realization in the relevant field.
The educational system in our country also provides opportunities to implement a similar concept in landscape architecture education. Consciously or not, prerequisites for such profiling are laid down in the legal framework (Article 7 of the law on chambers of architects and engineers in investment design):
"Art. 7. (Amendment - State Gazette, No. 79 of 2006) (1) (Amendment - SG No. 28 of 2009) Persons who received diplomas from an accredited higher education institution with the professional qualification "architect", "landscape architect ", "urbanist", "construction engineer" or "engineer" with a "master's" degree of education and qualification, have a limited design capacity and can provide design services in the field of urban planning and investment design after being entered in the register of designers with a limited design capacity in the relevant chamber." [1]
From this text, it is clear that the professions of Designer and Project Manager require a Master's degree. Quite logically, specialized master's degrees can be foreseen and required for other of the listed professions, but for some of them, a bachelor's degree would be sufficient. Such differentiation will be useful not only for the labor market but in any case it would create prerequisites for a more focused educational process creating prepared staff.
On a global scale, these processes are not new, but recently we have been observing similar attempts in our country as well. For several years, specialties similar to "Landscape Architecture" [2] have appeared in other universities. Such is "Decorative plants and landscape design" [4] at the University of Agronomy in Plovdiv with a bachelor's degree of study, which does not allow its graduates to acquire a designer's legal capacity in the KAB and, accordingly, they cannot develop as designers. Similar is the specialty "Urban Studies" [5] at the University of Architecture, Construction and Geodesy, which, on the one hand, claims to be active in the planning of urban spaces, and on the other hand, does not possess the necessary educational and qualification degree to acquire planning legal capacity. This is not the case with the recently opened specialty "Landscape Architecture and Landscape Planning" [3], which teaches in a master's program, but it is clear from the name that it is closely specialized in the field of landscape planning and has no claims to cover the rest of the spectrum of occupations related to landscape architecture with more biological aspects. This also leads to the question of whether the individual fields provided with master's degrees or bachelor's programs should not be in different scientific fields, even within the same Higher Education Institution - for example, whether in the University of Forestry or any other university in our country to have a single
educational module of fundamental disciplines within 4 to 6 semesters, and then profiling, including
by scientific field, and each university will be able to assess how many fields it can support.
REFERENCES
1. Law on Chambers of Architects and Engineers in Investment Design. 05 April 2016, amended State Gazette. No. 27 of April 5, 2016.
2. Landscape architecture. https://cutt.ly/62pAHs0
3. Landscape architecture and landscape planning. https://uacg.bg/?p=184&l=1&m=26
4. "Ornamental Plants and Landscape Design" https://cutt.ly/S2pALUP
5. Urbanism https://uacg.bg/?p=184&m=2&l=1
6. Pereira, P. 2022. BIM in Landscape Architecture: Scenarios, Possibilities and Breakthroughs. [BIM para paisagismo: cenarios, possibilidades e avangos] 11 May 2020. ArchDaily. (Trans. Duduch, Tarsila) Accessed 3 Dec 2022. <https://www.archdaily.com/938961/bim-in-landscape-architecture-scenarios-possibilities-and-breakthroughs> ISSN 0719-8884
7. Freire, M. 2013. Landscape Design Education: Challenges and Proposals. Landscape and Imagination: towards a baseline for education in a changing world Conference, Paris 2-4 May 2013. p. 393-396
8. J0rgensen, K., Stiles, R., Mertens, E., Karadeniz, N. (2022) Teaching landscape architecture: a discipline comes of age, Landscape Research, 47:2, 167-178
