Plenary Lecture

Environmental Education and Design; The Role of Landscape Architecture

Professor Martin van den Toorn
Faculty of Architecture
Delft University of Technology
POBox 5043
2600 GA DELFT
HOLLAND
Email: m.w.m.vandentoorn@tudelft.nl

Abstract: Most people in western societies no longer have direct contact with their natural living environment and learn mostly about environmental problems from media. This lack of direct experience with the natural environment in urban landscapes will give rise to a different view on ‘environmental education’.
In this paper we approach environmental education from an integrated point of view that also includes design of the daily environment. This environmental education can be distinguished in three interrelated steps. First of all: learning about the daily environment from primary school to University. This education should focus on the dynamics of life cycles like water, energy etc.. At the same time it should relate the daily environment on the local scale to the global scale. Secondly, to create new experiences in the daily living environment where ‘learning by doing’ or ‘learning by experience’ comes in the first place. There, young people can practice, find out for themselves what they learned in the first step. Thirdly to design daily environments that show how (natural) systems work and function in the daily living environment. For instance, show where energy comes from or how the water system works.
All three steps should be consistent with each other; that is, what you learn at school should be experienced in the daily environment. It means that not only our concept of ‘environment’ has been extended far beyond ecology and traditional views of nature, it also focusses on the daily living environments of urban people and makes people directly aware what they can do in their daily lives with the global concept of sustainability.

Brief Biography of the Speaker:
Prof. van den Toorn is a Dutch Landscape architect that studied landscape architecture in Wageningen (Holland) and in Berkeley, California where he did his Masters in Landscape Architecture. He has been teaching and doing research in landscape architecture for the last fifteen years both at Wageningen University and in Delft University at the Faculty of Architecture.
His main focus of research is theory and methodology in (urban) landscape architecture. Other subjects include: infralandscapes, globalisation and landscape architecture, water as a design material, design at the regional level, visual communication and design. Presently he is working at the Faculty of Architecture at Delft University, both teaching and researching.