Customer Reviews

Becoming a Landscape Architect: A Guide to Careers in Design

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I initially bought this book for my teenage son, who has been considering a career in architecture or landscape architecture. But as I glanced through it along with him, I was drawn into it and ended up reading it in one sitting. Even more ironic is the fact that I am a landscape architect myself, and have been in the field for almost 26 years. I found Ms. Foster's analysis of the topic to be not only thorough but exciting and diverse. The personal interviews offer a variety of creative approaches, values, and career paths -- a human touch often lacking in career reference materials. It also illustrates the artistic, environmental and social aspects of a profession that, while fast-growing, is still frequently misunderstood.
Reading this book was energizing for me as a landscape architecture professional, and it seems to have persuaded my son that it is the field for him too!

I am frequently using this book to explain to fellow architects, architecture students and friends what landscape architecture is and is becoming. It is most beneficial through the wide variety of interviews and breadth of coverage, describing the opportunities landscape architecture offers and the critical role landscape architects offer for our collective future health and well being.

This beautifully designed book by Kelleann Foster is well-written and carefully crafted. It is inspirational in the way she defines the exciting field of landscape architecture and its future through the words of a diverse range of practicing landscape architects and students. She skillfully portrays and presents how landscape architects differ from other design professionals in how they approach problem solving and create innovative solutions through a range of skills in tune with both the natural and cultural world. She also shows how this field is unique because of its expansive nature to include the visionary and big-picture perspectives that are so vital to dealing with global issues such as climate change on a local level in each community, project by project. I highly recommend Ms. Foster's book for those wanting to have a hand in making this world more lasting, healthy, safe, productive, peaceful, beautiful, and fun for a long time to come.

Delving headfirst into the question that has stymied landscape architects themselves for years -- "What is landscape architecture?", Kelleann Foster takes a brilliant approach towards answering this question. By posing a series of questions to a range of professional landscape architects in academics, non-profit organizations, government and private practice, in tandem with illustrated and detailed examples of national and international projects, Foster allows the voices and experiences of landscape architects themselves to provide definition of the field. Her simple inclusion of a photo of each landscape architect highlighted puts faces to the names, and the organization of the book makes it easy to read bit-by-bit, or all in one sitting -- readers can quickly scan the TOC or index to select landscape architects, topics or projects of interest. I highly recommend this book to schools, public libraries and universities, as well as aspiring and practicing landscape architects themselves. The clearer landscape architects become about who we are and what we can do, the more effective we will be at availing our services to those who want and need them. This book is a huge forward step in that direction.

I selected this book based on all the good reviews. I find it a difficult book to get into because all of the pictures are black and white and look like they were taken back in the 70's. Some of them I can barely discern which is the before and which is the after. If they do demonstrate good landscape design - these pictures certainly don't show it. The interviews of the actual architects are somewhat informative (for those wanting to go into the field), but I wasn't interested in reading them because the photographs of their work weren't attractive.