Nature and Culture Immortality

2012 Landscape Architecture student learning legacy is advanced with greater focus on physical and emotional engagement of being the responsible Steward of the Land. Projects undertaken by the students were maneuvered as a “creative and comprehensive landscape design forum” to deal with Nature and Culture’s IMMORTALITY. This is a unique landscape architecture program that would enable students not only becoming creative but also developing them into highly competent landscape architects who have sensible mind-sets about their accountability to develop a conducive living environment whilst protecting Mother Nature.

Studio project’s briefs and requirements were designed along with the above intentions. Adopting the Students Centered Learning as the main pedagogy. It highlighted the spirit to observe, understand and evaluate the practical and critical environmental issues. Students were envisioned to technically think of the advantages of Green ideas and being facilitated to critically see the value of GREEN - as precious as GOLD. Design studios and theory classes were conducted hand in hand. These approaches transmitted the practical and theoretical knowledge and
have helped students to broaden up their understanding on contemporary critical environmental issues and their relationships with nature, society, culture and religion. As a result, students conducted observation, design process,
theory and criticism thus forming a synthesized basis to produce their works that are available in this year’s publication.

The department forges ahead with students going for overseas study adventure through Out-bound Students Exchange Program. One group ventured to Bogor Agricultural Institute in Indonesia and the department also received in-bound exchange students from the same university. Students also extended their international working experiences via their six-month internship training in Shanghai, Jakarta, Brunei and Singapore. For most others, highly reputable local landscape consulting firms awaited and trained them as “Landscape Architects in The Making”. The Cosmic project showcases the outcomes of the First Year students’ projects. These reliefs and sculptures represented their abilities to symbolically transformed the spirits of dynamic, energetic and vibrant understanding about Nature and Culture. Combining design theories and processes with construction of the artifacts intertwined a comprehensive conclusion of abstraction and invention.

Nor Atiah Ismail