Mark Di Lucido

Not to minimize your predicament, but when I started out, I also was asked to perform grunt work even though I’m a member of the ‘y’ chromosome club. In my case, the culprit was the 1990s groupthink of the design professions (think Madmen) to heap tedium, long hours, low pay, and lesser tasks onto apprentices so the partners and owners could do th…[Read more]

Edward Tufte’s books are the gold standard when it comes to the display of quantitative information. Left-brained people like engineers, and half-right and half-left brained people like architects will relate to Tufte’s logic. You could even present the same information simultaneously in traditional spreadsheet format (which Tufte characterizes as…[Read more]

I’m not doing what I hoped to be doing the day I started classes but am pretty sure I couldn’t go back to my original career expectation and find fulfillment in it. While in college, my goal was conservation oriented—like working for the National Park Service. Now, as I wind down my career, I’m a bureaucrat managing public art. In between these…[Read more]

Key phrase in your question is ‘higher median salary’. Depending on many variables e.g., policy versus physical planning, big/small market, private/public sector etc., LAs can make much more, or less than planners. And I would argue that the Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn’t consider the potential income from moonlighting available to LAs.

In…[Read more]

The exam also requires test-taking skills in addition to landscape design knowledge. That is, you will need to use your design knowledge, however acquired, correctly and quickly in sustained focus for several hours. This means good time management skills (you’re racing against the clock) and the ability to swiftly and fully understand what is a…[Read more]

Perspective from the other side of the pond . . . I’m guessing you’re mid-40s which is certainly not too late to retrain. Mid-50s might be pushing it. I can’t speak to how it’s done in the UK, but in the U.S. there’s a tendency to hire younger workers, in part because they learn applications faster (a little bit of irony here because you alrea…[Read more]

I don’t think I’ll invite any of you to my Christmas party.

Putting your work (sub-consultant) on a client’s (prime consultant) title block and sealing the sheets that only have your work is very common. And it makes sense because the disciplines’ drawings will have consistent information such as issue dates, revision numbers, addenda, etc., and it makes for a professional looking set. The bigger reason t…[Read more]

Thanks Jason.

Thanks Rob.

OK everybody, play nice. Was not my intent to cast any aspersions with my original post but I do believe LEED primarily benefits the USGBC and is only marginally effective in doing what it’s supposed to do—save energy. And I believe it’s overly complicated otherwise it wouldn’t need accredited professionals to rate sites and buildings. Overl…[Read more]

Hi Alan,
I detect some latent curmudgeonly tendencies in your response. But that’s OK—takes one to know one! I also agree 100% with your viewpoint. Used to be just LEED, then Sustainable Sites came into vogue (apparently subsumed by LEED), then it was/is Green Globes (green industry’s version of the Golden Globes?). So I’m wondering what the lates…[Read more]

I would add two things: the design process should include discovering what the site really wants to be, as if you’re uncovering a hidden treasure or peeling layers of an onion. Some designers call this, “letting the site tell you what it wants to be”. This idea comes from Alexander Pope’s ‘Epistle  IV’, which introduces the concept of ‘genius loci’…[Read more]

This reply addresses the CAD portion of your post.
A co-worker in one LA office I used to work in was trained as a steel fabricator on buildings. He injured his back and couldn’t return to his original trade so he taught himself Autocad (I want to say he did this in 6 months to a year) and was able to parlay his relatively quickly gained p…[Read more]

Potential job opportunities are also a function of your local economy. States like Florida, Arizona and Nevada, that way over built in the single-family market still have not returned to pre-recession hiring levels. Other locations like North Dakota, Texas, Maryland, are hot now but whether they will continue to be so when you complete your degree…[Read more]

Might help you understand ‘what the profession was like’ in terms of job security and pay if you had some numbers. I’ve been through three economic ‘events’: the first when I came out of school in 1991; the second in 2001; and the Big Kahuna in 2008. Averaged this works out to one event every eight years. Except for the Big Kahuna, I suspect the…[Read more]

“Does more low density developed land create more work for LA’s?”
Compared to what? Landscape design for Paolo Soleri type arcologies—certainly. Designing urban forests for dense, walkable cities—probably. Producing landscape architecture design for transit oriented development—probably not. Is it another way for LA’s to make money—of cour…[Read more]