Direction-awareness in Landscape Architecture Curriculum Design: A Competency-based Analysis of Emerging Needs and Global Trends

Abstract

At the present time, the landscape architecture profession plays a critically important role in mediating and balancing the relationship between the built environment and the natural world. However, the global context of the 21^st century has undergone rapid and profound transformations across economic, social, and technological dimensions. Most critically, the escalation of environmental crises has necessitated a paradigm shift in the role of landscape architects. The profession must transition from an explicit focus on creating landscape aesthetics to tackling "real-world problems," such as climate change adaptation, disaster risk reduction, urban water management, and the mitigation of biodiversity loss. This pressing reality mandates that landscape architecture curricula must adapt to these changing dynamics to cultivate graduate competencies that align with future global demands. This review article employs critical review and competency-based analysis methodology to examine the influence of external factors on the landscape architecture profession and curriculum design. These four factors include environmental contexts and societal challenges, expected work skills in the next century, expected competencies of landscape architecture professional organizations, and determination of graduate competencies from local and international landscape architecture curricula. The review of environmental contexts and societal challenges reveals that issues regarding water and food security, human well-being, and disaster risks are increasingly complex and interconnected. These challenges require integrative solutions where landscape architecture can significantly contribute to mitigation and resilience strategies through the design of urban green spaces and built environment. Regarding the expected work skills in the next century, the World Economic Forum identifies three core competencies essential for the future labour market: 1) cognitive agility, 2) emotional & adaptive intelligence, and 3) tech & planet-awareness. Notably, the "environmental stewardship skill" has emerged as a highly demanded skill and is directly linked to the landscape architecture profession, particularly in the design of blue-green infrastructure and ecological restoration programs. For the expected competencies of landscape architect from six professional organizations worldwide. There is a shared emphasis that the landscape architecture profession is a multidisciplinary field, requiring the integration in design, science, and management discipline to achieve sustainability. Therefore, a future landscape architects must possess expertise in ecology and the utilization of advanced digital technologies as well as a strong commitment to environmental ethics. Regarding the determination of graduate competencies from domestic and international landscape architecture curricula, it was found that the United States curricula group focuses on establishing a balance between ecological systems and culture through project-based learning and the utilization of environmental simulation technology to analyse spatial dynamics. Meanwhile, the Asian curricula group highlights the integration of cross-disciplinary knowledge to address complex urban problems within the regional Asian context, emphasizing a robust learning structure and practical application. The group of Thai curricula can be analytically categorized into two main groups: one that emphasizes the well-rounded competencies to prepare graduates for the profession, and another group that emphasizes distinctive competencies, which predominantly highlight cultural heritage, vernacular landscape and local wisdom. This review and competency-based analysis reveal a significant gap in Thai landscape architecture curricula: the intensive lack of a clear focus on landscape ecology, urban ecology, and environmental stewardship when compared to global trends that focus on urgently addressing the climate crisis. Although sustainable development goals, addressed by the United Nations, is mentioned in Thai curricula, it has not yet been pushed as a prominently outstanding core knowledge competency as it should be. Therefore, the direction-awareness in landscape architecture curriculum design in Thailand should bridge these gaps by designing a curriculum that integrates ground-breaking multidisciplinary knowledge to produce graduates who are capable of being "change agents". This involves developing graduate competencies capable of formulating landscape architecture that helps solve real-world problems and mitigate the impacts of climate change to sustain human well-being. The curriculum should focus on concurrently developing both technical or hard skills, and competency or soft skills, especially analytical thinking, complex problem-solving, and the use of technology for sustainable design. Crucially, the curriculum must emphasize environmental stewardship skills and cultivate learner characteristic of global citizenship with a global outlook, planetary citizenship, and being a lifelong learner. The teaching approach should focus on hands-on practice through project-based learning using real-world problems in the site-specific contexts, and promote multidisciplinary collaborative learning at both local and international levels. This is to ensure that graduates are well-prepared for a highly competitive labour market and can truly utilize the landscape architecture discipline to enhance human well-being as well as ecosystem restoration. Additionally, it also responds to the importance of curriculum revision that can truly impact the paradigm shift in student competencies development, preparing them to keep pace with the rising crises and opportunities of the future world. This also ensures that the landscape architecture profession remains relevant and can sustainably make contributions to the society.