[John Hotto]

I can totally understand it. I don’t disrespect CE’s that design bridges and superhighways, but they can’t tell me can’t design a gd sidewalk, trail or a parking lot.

[John Hotto]

The CE superiority thing is true. I’ve had transportation CE’s challenge my ability to lay out a sidewalk for crying out loud because that is in the domain of transportation design. Same with trails and parking lots. There are just not enough dams or wastewater treatment plants or bridges to go around for all of the CE’s so they pick on us for all of the scraps, and we end up specifying the lawn seed.

[John Hotto]

I wish there was more opportunity out there for landscape architects, but the reality is that the competition is really intense. It’s a good design practice; we make environments more natural and green as opposed to the stark reality of concrete and cost controls, not to mention graft and corruption where non-essentials like landscaping and outdoor space development takes a back seat to everything else. If I had to do it all over again, I’d do the planning thing, since they seem to get a lot more respect from society than la’s. Depends on the person though; some can really create their own offices and be rainmakers and sell design work and do really well. Some might do well in government, which is what I wish I did. The CE world eventually ages you out in place of younger, cheaper la’s and it gets tougher and tougher to get a decent job, but I really admire those la’s that started their own offices and survived on their own. I think la’s should be doing more ecological engineering such as restoring wetlands, streams, parks and other natural areas that have been neglected or worn out. But then again, you will be challenged by all of the other design professions for the projects based on technical ability and cost. 

[John Hotto]

Drawing is definitely important in all design professions, but there are great landscape designers, gardeners, furniture makers, sculptors, etc. that don’t do a lot of super fancy drawings first. I simply stated that in my experience too much emphasis is placed on fancy drawings in the la educational system, then we get pigeon holed doing renderings and drafting instead of meaningful design, and I believe that is true based on my experience of 33 years. Also, you don’t always need drawings to build things, maybe a nuclear reactor or submarine, but not a garden, patio, table, bird house, fence, etc. I have an old friend who makes furniture out of metal without doing drawings first and he sells his stuff all over the world.

[John Hotto]

Of course drawing is an important communication tool, but if you can’t build an idea or it doesn’t work, then all you will end up being is a graphic artist, which is fine in its own right, but that not what we want to be, is it?

[John Hotto]

The education received in a typical college LA program is actually pretty good, it just took me a couple of decades to realize it. Good problem solving, communication and environmental skills are usually acquired. I think one problem is that too much emphasis is placed on drawing and graphic skills which the civil engineering community is more than happy to take advantage of, since their drawings are more straight up technical construction type instead of presentation and/or idea sales. So, we get pigeon holed into being their drafting/cad monkeys and they really have no use for landscape architecture as a legit profession, because, guess what? “It’s not in the budget, believe it or not.” This of course is not a universal truth, but I have experienced it throughout my so called career. The juicy la projects, if any come in, are given to the favorite, usually younger and attractive female la’s since the la profession is perceived as a more feminine pursuit by your typical he-man engineer. I believe it is more important to emphasize la design implementation through education and real world results and benefits, then maybe we all can get more work and the profession can grow to where it can be. Keep in mind that Frank Loyd Wright really didn’t draw many of his plans; his drafters actually took his basic sketches and transformed them into schematics and construction documents which is the way it was done in the old days.

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