University of Technology, Sydney / School of Architecture / Landscape Architecture Program

Two years ago we entered the landscape schools Biennial with a provocation that climate change necessitated experimentation with alternative methodologies and forms of representation. In this submission we illustrate our school’s ambition to educate students to advocate for culture change. Advocacy in this context is cultivated by a deep understanding of communities and the ecosystems that populate their locales. To begin our story, we introduce a project from our fi rst year undergraduate program, where students learnt to challenge traditional design problem-solving, and develop skills in addressing the fl ux of ecological design in urban communities. Our third year students’ project speculates on the nexus of remote human and non-human communities, and their capacities to adapt to an alarmingly warmer world. These projects are the early stepping stones for students to become caring and critical practitioners. We then show three divergent projects from our masters programs: one that regenerates suburban backyards with a mesh of renewed ecosystems, another that works with urban neighbourhood communities to support biodiverse grasslands in local parks, and a third that draws traditional knowledge with an Aboriginal community to regenerate a lagoon ecosystem in a coastal settlement. In these everyday places, where the threat of climate change is deceptively pervasive, we encourage students to learn how to design processes that adjust ecosystems, to draw out the minor narratives that will instrumentalise culture change, and to advocate for landscape to encourage adaptation. Un-heroic by intention, these projects show how to negotiate for catalytic change to build community and environmental resilience