Design Process in Landscape Architecture

What do students of architecture rely on as their design strategy? What areas of knowledge serve as ‘primary generators’ of main concepts in the design process? To investigate this problem, two groups of students were selected from two different universities: Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran and Imam Khomeini International University, Qazvin. Both groups designed the same project as their first course on Landscape Design. Two years after this course, a survey was conducted in both groups. As a dependent factor indicating primary generators, students were asked about the importance of certain aspects such as ecologic, aesthetic, cultural and economic values, etc. The students were also asked to submit their initial concepts and mention priority topics for the course. The results show that ‘scale’ and ‘ecological factors’ are more important for students as primary generators. It is further demonstrated that the three training priority topics are: (i) basic concepts and landscape ecology; (ii) social and cultural concepts; and (iii) aesthetic principles.