A Study of the Collage Method in Landscape Architecture Education

The methods used to educate landscape architecture are as varied as designing techniques from the one hand and education methods from the other. The fact that students often lack a firm artistic basis to build on when they take on landscape architecture courses makes the education process more difficult.This necessitates an analysis into the methods used to educate landscape architecture and their effects on students. In this paper, we will introduce and analyze two basic approaches known as the systematic and the intuitive approaches. The collage method will be studied within the framework of the intuitive approach. To conduct this study we have analyzed the education process and final productions of a group of students taking their first course in landscape architecture in Tehran University’s faculty of architecture. These students worked with the collage method. To analyze the results we studied views expressed by the students themselves about the pros and cons of this method.Finally, we concluded that the collage method is an efficient method of education as it encourages creativity by boosting self-confidence.