Design thinking in landscape architecture

Abstract

Landscape architects are well placed to bring their creativity and their creative thinking skills to contribute to the development of solutions for many of the world's environmental and community-based problems. Landscape architecture education has a significant role to play in providing opportunities to ensure that graduates are skilled in creative problem solving. Creativity through thinking and reflection is often referred to as "design thinking". This article considers the role of design thinking in landscape architecture by describing characteristics of design thinking and design thinkers, and the role of visualisation. The article also reports the findings from a self-assessment of design thinking ability undertaken by a group of postgraduate landscape architecture students studying at the College of Forestry of the Inner Mongolia Agricultural University in Hohhot. The variation in self-assessed capability highlights the importance of formality including creativity and design thinking skills in all programmes of landscape architecture.