The discipline of Landscape Architecture is recently developing towards becoming more and more involved in addressing global challenges of urbanization, of general well-being in the urban and peri-urban environment. Only through a thorough collaboration between Urban Designers, Architects and Landscape Architects can these issues be addressed appropriately.

In 2006 the Landscape Design and Ecosystem Program at the Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences of the American University of Beirut (AUB), Lebanon joined the network of the UNESCO chair in landscape and environmental (www.paysage.umontreal.ca) design affiliated with the University of Montreal, Canada. This initiative aims at addressing questions of urban and landscape design through collaboration and cultural exchange between different countries and generations. By joining this activity unexpected possibilities for students and teachers to share ideas have emerged.

Since 2004, each fall chosen students and their teachers from different world regions and universities meet in order to address and develop specific themes of landscape and urban design, which are then further developed by the local municipalities. Countries the Landscape Program of AUB has so far visited include Tunisia, South Korea and this year Japan, but workshops have also taken place in Morocco, Lebanon, and China. Each two-week workshop culminates in a final presentation, jury and distribution of medals of the projects elaborated by the students and teachers.

This year the 47 students from 5 world regions and 8 countries including China, Canada, Japan, Italy, Morocco, Tunisia, Syria and Lebanon were hosted by the municipality city of Kobe, Japan. The team from AUB included the senior students Mira Mabsout, Leah Moukarzel and Dima Rachid, accompanied by their teacher Julie Weltzien. The UNESCO gold medal this year was proudly received by a group that addressed the issue of a canal revitalisation in the urban fabric. Team members came from Italy, Japan and Lebanon. (http://www.unesco-paysage.umontreal.ca/activites-pedagogiques-kobeENG.html )

The city of Kobe, with its extensive harbour being a major trade centre, was largely destroyed in the 1995 earthquake, which affected most of its historical neighbourhoods with its traditional wooden buildings. The reconstruction and industrial developments in general result in a more or less fragmented city layout, which tells little about the once apparent landscape connections with the hinterland, the rivers, or the sea. The chosen sites therefore covered various aspects and challenges of landscape and urban design to create ideas for functioning and alive urban environments.

In Kobe six different sites were be addressed each by two teams of 3-4 students with different backgrounds, thus offering a high complexity of subjects.

The first challenge the students and their teachers are confronted with is to attempt at trying to understand the local culture, their landscape and urban traditions and most importantly their use of public space. Extensive site visits and discussions with the local municipality, professors and teachers help to get a glimpse of the complexity of so far mostly unknown cultural assets and demands. The students are then asked to develop their projects in only 2 weeks, under intense assistance by their teachers. Now not only site issues play a role, but another challenge emerges, which is communication among the students, i.e. finding a common language, since not everybody’s English turns out to be fluent. However maps and drawings, and common efforts help to ease those efforts.

The pressure to develop functioning designs on different scales in a short period of time does not allow long struggles, but decisions need to be taken rather quickly in order to be transformed into viable ideas.

One could now argue that designs developed by more or less inexperienced students over such a short time in a mostly unknown cultural context cannot suggest real solutions of complex problems. However, since local municipalities are greatly involved in the process and in the discussions as well as the final juries, a process of discussion emerges in the larger context that otherwise might not have taken place.  Through those workshops in any case the discipline of landscape architecture has the chance to evolve from a profession frequently regarded as a luxurious by-product of architecture into a discipline that plays a major role in decision making in the context of urban design and urban well-being.

Other than the very valuable cultural exchange and recognising global similarities in the recent challenges of landscape and urban design, the stimulation of processes within municipalities, are major benefits of those workshops. At the same time they offer a great opportunity for the participating universities to rethink their study programs, to see themselves in comparison with other universities and also to refresh thought and approach in teaching.