Design through debate: a new studio

Abstract

The advanced landscape design studio for post-graduate students of Landscape Architecture is the culmination of ideas from a number of design studios at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT). The Design Through Debate studio was designed to precipitate innovations by exploring a series of propositions, through abstract forms of representation and using the processes of debating. For the students, it provides an opportunity to strengthen the design-theory nexus through the exploration of cultural theory and production, thus enriching the design process and their eventual landscape architectural practices. This requires a conceptual shift in order to expand the tools of ideational development and representation, so that new ways of seeing are generated. The method employed to induce this shift is based on Schon's Reflective Practitioner techniques of reflection-in- and -on-action.