FIU Landscape Architecture + Environmental Urban Design student, Selene Basile (MLA ’20), was announced as a winner of the Future Landscape Architects of America 2019 Curriculum Challenge Award of Excellence for her lesson plan, Intro to unsuccessful Landscape Design.
What is the Future Landscape Architects of America Curriculum Challenge?
The FLAA Curriculum Challenge is a competition where participants can work together or individually to create a lesson plan to help expose K-12 students to the field of landscape architecture.
What was the goal of your lesson plan?
The goal of my lesson plan, Intro to unsuccessful Landscape Design was to expose 10th-12th grade students to the profession of Landscape Architecture – more specifically, understanding what makes a landscape project successful vs. unsuccessful. The lesson plan encourages students to think about how they would improve spaces within their communities by providing precedents of projects that have successfully done so in different parts of the world and at various scales.
Students are asked in my lesson plan to compare successful designs with poor designs and discuss the characteristics which distinguish the two. They are then asked to help develop an improved design for a space previously picked as being poorly designed.
How can your lesson plan help expose K-12 students to landscape architecture?
The lesson plan can help expose K-12 students to landscape architecture as it can be utilized by teachers across the country as a guide to engage students in what can easily become a multidisciplinary project or simply through a few lessons.
How did you come up with the idea for your lesson plan?
I was inspired by my work last semester with Dream in Green where I got to mentor a group of high school students from Miami Sunset Senior High who were participating in an urban design competition. Mentoring the students gave me a better idea of how I wanted to execute my lesson plan based on some of the questions I was asked by the students.
Basile was among four winners in the 2019 Curriculum Challenge.
The Future Landscape Architects of America launched its inaugural Curriculum Challenge last year. The competition is open to anyone in the field of Landscape Architecture.
To learn more about FLAA and the Curriculum Challenge click here.
To view Basile’s complete lesson plan click here.
