This course provides you with a basic understanding of the professional operations of landscape architectural practice. It will introduce the range of practice undertaken by qualified landscape architects and focus on requirements typical to most forms of practice, large or small, in public and private sectors. The course will provide familiarity with the full scope of legal and administrative requirements of practice and office procedure. This includes the production of all forms of drawn and written project documentation from seeking projects, through establishment of the brief, agreement on fees or processes of bidding or tendering, site assessment, design conception and documentation, invoicing and contract administration, to final client handover and ongoing management of liability. It will introduce you to the legal and professional practice aspects of Landscape Architecture through lectures and seminars by practitioners with a range of project experience. This will be reinforced and further explained through accompanying tutorials and assignments.

This course includes a work integrated learning (WIL) experience in which your knowledge and skills will be applied and assessed in a real or simulated workplace context and where feedback from industry and/ or community is integral to your experience.

While there is no formally assessed requirement to undertake an internship, practical training in an approved office, whether a local private firm or government agency, is strongly encouraged. Such work experience provides you with an opportunity to overview the variety and complexity of project processes in a working office. You can build on their general understanding of office functions, the administrative procedures and design stages involved in applying for and acquiring a landscape project, and subsequent modes of administering the project through to the execution stage. Additionally, work experience is hoped to make you aware of the significant influences that the client, community, economics and other policy planning issues exert over the design and construction process. You will be exposed to the design process as an open and dynamic one, full of opportunities and challenges that come from real constraints and compromises, rather than the outcome of a singular, individually driven project objective.