Placing design, and designing’s place, in landscape architecture research

Abstract

In European-based discussions concerning landscape architecture research methods, there is strong advocacy for the term ‘research through designing’ and its acronym RTD (Lenzholzer et al, 2013). Given an agreed lack of clarity regarding the role of design in landscape architecture research, the suggestion of certainty contained in the term RTD is inviting. However, could this directness of phrasing prevent design from expanding its scope in landscape architecture research at a time when only a small number of published studies on the topic exist? Advocacy for RTD is part of a continued skirmishing with design’s potential in creative research that is manifest in sporadic articles in journals like Design Issues, Design Research, Design Philosophy Papers, Architectural Design Research, Journal of Architectural Education and Landscape Review, and studies within wider texts by Deming and Swaffield (2011) and van den Brink et al (2016). These works attempt to shape theoretical models and provide exemplars for design’s role in academic research that is supported with an expanding number of international interdisciplinary conferences, as well as panel and workshop discussions at recent Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture (2017) and European Council of Landscape Architecture Schools (2017) conferences.