Landscape Architecture

Zoe:                I always knew I wanted to go into the design field and then kind of scrolling through the UTS website, I was just looking through their architecture options when I was kind of reading up on Landscape Architecture it was like a perfect balance between the structural elements of architecture, but also involving ecology, the environment. I think the environment is such an important issue at the moment and to nurture it and protect it and to be able to do that through design is pretty amazing.

Mark:               Landscape Architecture has a huge role in shaping the human experience of the city. Landscape Architecture is really about designing that setting where people live out their lives. I'd say it's one of the best kept secrets, because people assume that it is about landscaping or changing landscape on a small level when really it's about life. It's about culture. The public domain is always important, because it's that place that brings people together.

Zoe:                I've been working at TYRRELLSTUDIO for seven months. When I started working here, it was like everything, the past three years had just clicked into place.

Hayley:             Being able to work in practice while still at uni and having the two going at once, it makes you faster at doing little things and you get into the groove of it a lot more. The Western Sydney Parklands Project, it's a huge project and something that really interested me when I applied for the job here.

Mark:               So it's a vast and beautiful tract of land, a 1500 hectare park, which is five times the size of Central Park in New York, put aside as the greenbelt to limit the growth of Sydney in 1968 and since then, the city has leapt across that greenbelt and into western Sydney and more and more people will be living in western Sydney in the next 30 years, another one million people. So, there'll be a city three times the size of Canberra out there. So, a piece of greenbelt becomes a Central Park for these people. Some of the things we're doing to address the challenges of heat in that landscape are looking at the farm dam structure of water in that landscape. We're trying to take people into the coolest parts of the landscape and create these small areas where lots of people can gather and be in a more comfortable microclimate.

Hayley:             So what's different about working design is that you're not stressing, typically, for exams and taking notes and trying to cram information. You're actually working in the practical world and designing things that you're interested in. For now, doing honours year, you're given a lot more freedom as well as you progress in the course. So, that's kind of excited me, and now I think I will be coming back for something in postgrad as well.