Landscape architecture student

Growing up in Little Rock, Amanda Abernathy didn’t know much about landscape architecture until her senior year of high school. Her parents encouraged their studious daughter to seek a professional job, but a surgeon didn’t sound quite right to her. She’d always been a natural artist.

“I was always good at science, but I had more of a passion for art. So I wanted a more design based discipline.” In online research, she found a heading under architecture called landscape architecture. She’d never heard of it, but it piqued her interest. At the Fay Jones School of Architecture’s summer orientation, she learned she’d get to study abroad. She also discovered that so much of her world consists of landscape architecture.

“I knew of developers and architects but not landscape architects. It was also nice to learn the distinction between gardening and designing. Because I never really knew about the design part.” She realized that, much more than just her backyard, she could design hospital grounds or a college campus or an urban center. “It was also really nice to find a profession that meets my parents’ professional standards but still allows me to draw. It’s nice that there’s a good balance.”

Abernathy is in her second year of her five-year degree. The first semester studio covered drawing and use of color, seeing something and drawing it. “That came very easily.”

The second semester was more. “It wasn’t just hand-eye coordination, putting what you see to pen and paper, which I already knew how to do. It was being able to think correctly, and to be able to think like a designer. That was a challenge.”

“We had our first projects where we had to make sense out of space. We weren’t drawing something; we were designing something. And I had nothing to look at and copy perfectly. I had to make it up and I had to know why it worked, not just, oh, this looks pretty.”

Doing projects in studio pulls her out of her comfort zone because there aren’t always specific directions; “The professors purposely make projects vague, which is hard. I think having the background in art definitely helped because I wasn’t struggling with drawing, I could focus on thinking. I didn’t have two issues.”

Still, the thinking part was a challenge, but one she simply confronted. “It was just diving into it and hoping I didn’t sink. It was more about the experience and having to accept that that first project in Design 2 might not be an A like it was in Design 1.” Still, she did well. “It was a lower A, but I’m just that kind of person. I have very high drive. So I haven’t failed anything, but it was the first time where I felt like that was a possibility.”

She and her classmates often discuss the difficulties of landscape architecture within the design fields. “We have a million and one variables to deal with landscape architecture. We can’t have A/C and heat whenever we need. We have to have plants that survive at specific times. It’s the living environment plus small built structures, plus it has to complement the architectural structures. ... We can’t make any landscape design and have it go anywhere. We consider wind, sun, shade – all of that.”

For Design 3, the projects aren’t just about color or designing an imaginary place, but actually going to a location spot and seeing the conditions and taking everything in. Her woody plants class (a horticulture course) also gives her the tools to know how plants will act and react.

In September, her studio took a field trip to Dallas-Fort Worth to visit and observe existing spaces. They looked at plazas and their designs to see what does and doesn’t work. They saw who was or wasn’t using them and tried to determine why.

“We’re learning about movable seating, making sure people have places to sit, making sure that there’s sun and that it’s still going to be warm in the wintertime, making sure the design looks good, and it’s not awkward and they’re not directly facing each other because they don’t want to sit that way. ... There are a lot of built spaces that are dead. And that was a waste of design because it’s not functional like they wanted it to be. We get to see the good and the bad.”

Before heading to Dallas, they looked at an empty lot at the corner of Block and Dickson streets, which they’ll use as their “blank slate” for their project. In their design, they can remove the pavement and any of the vegetation, most of which is old.

“Using what we’ve seen in Dallas and what we’ve learned works and doesn’t work, we’re trying to make that a gateway spot, a little park, that links the university and Dickson Street. It’s really cool because now we see all these elements we need to include, and we’ve oriented ourselves. We know where the wind’s coming from, and we have to acknowledge the private property. There’s a public alley right beside it: So what do we need to screen? What are the bad views? Where are good views?”

There are clear, picturesque views to a church steeple and to Old Main. “So now we’re going to make a design that makes the site best functionally and aesthetically, based on what we’ve learned and what’s already there. We’ll decide what we can keep and what needs to be redone.”

From their observations of films and their Texas field trip, they learned that the most successful plazas had a food cart or a restaurant nearby, as well as abundant seating. Some designers made the planters with walls too high for use as seating. They are used more in the denser areas of the city, areas with higher pedestrian traffic. “People use them for convenience; they don’t walk out of their way to use them on their lunch break at work. ... People like to sit in areas where they can feel private but they still feel like they’re part of the action.”

The design disciplines of interior design, architecture and landscape architecture all deal with human behavior; but landscape architecture is, more than the others, about public human behavior and a broad diversity of people.

“Another thing that makes sites successful is triangulation and building relationships. ... I think a big part of landscape architecture is not just the individual relationship and how you view the site, but also being able to interact with other people, even if you don’t know them.”