[Soo Wai-Kin]

work in small offices where you only report to principal..  learn, learn , learn.. geographic location is relevant to where you want settle…

best of luck

[Soo Wai-Kin]

Andrew, 

I agree that LEED is nothing more than good design.  What LEED has done is substantiate that our good design is a selling point and the marketplace has finally come around to our design ideas as part of a standard regiment.  LEED adoption is not ding our profession but a plus and we should continue to educate home and commercial owners alike that maybe one day we can all go native and provide more sustainable designs that stand the test of time.  

[Soo Wai-Kin]

Blanket statements such as ‘basically, commercial clients are only interested in budget and deadlines’ is not accurate as we all know, every project, owner and client is different.  I’ve had plenty of commercial owners that reversed their VE efforts for a better project, ie decrease spacing, better specimen trees, non rectilinear swale design, varying materials in the landscape, more trees despite singnage visibility concerns.   

At the end of the day Alan, I’m trying to convince you that the our ‘good’ designs ARE adopted as standard practice because the marketplace has adopted LEED as a selling point for properties and leasing. ASLA promotion of our profession on the other hand….  

[Soo Wai-Kin]

Alan, 
Totally agree with your statement.  LEED does have certifications that take into account TI work only.  

The argument that new programs and certifications is not germane to our profession because some of us managed to carve out a career without any certifications beyond state licensing is either not interested in how the LA profession is progressing or is feeling pressured to learn design concepts previously thought be under under other disciplines.  

I am not old school by any means but as a long as I can remember, anytime when LAs professes their profession, that common response is never reassuring.  How did our centuries year old profession, who designed great scenic highways and byways, universities, national parks, and metropolitan urban spaces continue to incite the common response, ‘can you design my yard’?

Nothing against the residential practitioners, who I have great respect for their great patience in dealing with homeowners but we all know that LAs today are as diverse in their scope of work and even more more so with their expertise.  We have lost the basics (road design, horticulture) but gained great insight in public design, regional environmental issues, and site restoration.  

LAs may only be involved in 4-5 credits in the LEED system, SITES  on the other hand is trying really hard to provide a platform where LAs work is truly displayed, acknowledged and celebrated.  This is very important to the vitality of our profession, as we have moved away from designing roads, scenic byways and luxury homes to addressing more regional issues  such as droughts, habitat fragmentation and site restoration.  

Wasting hours at a LEED meeting is not a good introduction to LEED, but LEED/SITES or any new flavor of certifications increases the awareness of our profession.  When LEED is applied as intended, it is apparent that LAs do deserve a place at the table at the project kickoff meeting and not after the whole design team has moved on.  

[Soo Wai-Kin]

yes

[Soo Wai-Kin]

thank you all for the advice and guidance, pass the test today, seems like the questions have multiple answers, i looked up some answers when i got out and there were indeed true. Anyway, oaks, oaks, oaks…. fire/fuel mod, wetland jurisdiction, everything that nanda mentioned came up! Thank you again…

[Soo Wai-Kin]

despite the fact that you have already found a BLA program, some of this information still applies, a lot of BLA programs have neglected if not abandoned the foundations of landscape architecture, ie part architect, part civil engineer, part horticulturist, in favor of emphasis on design process and conceptual thinking. Not that there is anything wrong with instilling an eye for basic design concepts and elements. It’s just that most BLA graduates come into the job market having a sense of entitlement to designing a project themselves off the get go. Lacking a foundation in horticulture, project management, grading and CAD, GIS, Adobe suite (or equivalent), and 3Dsoftware skills is akin to a physician who performs a surgical procedure without an analytical mind entrenched in risk management, patient-doctor relationship, and managing outcomes. My last foray with academia left me bitter as I faced the realities in the workforce lacking those skills I mentioned. Those skills are basic tools of the trade yet most BLA grads think a pretty rendering is a the final solution for a design.

Most designers have niches to fill, ie. project management, conceptual designer, production and construction. If one can master all, you can pretty much be start your own firm and be successful. I hate to box a students growth as a designer into these broad categories but that is a fact in private firm.

From a student’s standpoint, establish your foundation and damn well yell when the essential skills weren’t thought, and pursue your design acumen in all your projects. Given your background and the fact that Landscape architecture is such a niche field, you will find yourself in places you will never expect, ie working for a land trust modeling land conservation priorities… With a better foundation, you will make better choices for this next stage of your career…

[Soo Wai-Kin]

try UC verde bufallo grass

[Soo Wai-Kin]

Honestly, i feel there is no such thing as a demeaning job, an honest job for an honest pay is always a good thing, i have worked in a lot of sectors (public, private, non-profit) of multiple industries and what i see is a lack of respect for blue collar jobs and a lack of maturity in the ppl with blue collar jobs. This attitude contributed to the ever growing illegal immigration problem. Stop blaming illegals for ‘taking away jobs’. I have nothing but the utmost respect for ppl who work in a foreign country having to leave their families in order to feed them. I use to be one of them. The illegal issue is a supply and demand problem, hitherto, i have yet to see a news flash on the ‘huge fines levied on contractors’. If Americans would change their attitudes towards these ”demeaning jobs’ and lobby for living wages, the problem would not have elevated to this scale.

White collar jobs are only spoken off as ‘where the money is’ and not about the ethics and responsibility that it comes with. Hiring illegals is a crime. Destroying life’s with financial gimmicks to me is a death sentence. I would prefer fines and sentences for white collar crimes to match and even exceed non-white collar crimes for the damage it does to society as a whole.

I made it a point to learn every aspect of an industry i was ever involved in and increase efficiency in every job i ever had (including washing dishes at a bar). Job skills are job skills, if you take nothing out of your previous job as you progress with your future undertakings, you have already failed.

‘Living skills’ today are severely lacking with the younger generation today. When they have no respect for ‘demeaning jobs’, they end up taking everything for granted (especially financial responsibility and literacy) and i only have the parents to blame for that. Parents leave parenting to schools which is wrong and disastrous. Schools are for foundations in jobs/career skills. Parents are for morals and ethics.

Kevin entering LA and perhaps saddling on more debt with school loans may not be the path to go in the long run (my wife was clueless about her career, and all she ended up with was debt). He is better off taking horticultural design and CAD/skecthup/3d max classes in a community college or working for a nursery to dip his toes in LA first before making the giant dive. If he wants to kick start his creativity, learn some design software, draw,paint, or sketch, if you have passion to do this on your own, you will succeed in LA.

You do not need a GSD discovery center to tell you to sign up for more school debt in return for a piece of paper that does not translate to jobs. Most Harvard graduates I know could not hack it in the real work and end up teaching in Midwestern school to espouse theory.

[Soo Wai-Kin]

LA is such a broad field, you need to figure where in LA do you fit… An MLA is a great experience but most programs are not accredited which may be an issue with licensure, and landing a job. An MLA means close to nothing in landing a job sometimes, but it does perpetuate a sense of maturity and responsibility, however, without skills, a CAD drafter with an AA degree will take the position you are applying for anytime.

If you want to design in a private firm, horticultural skills is a must, grading and stormwater management design is necessary, CAD skills are a must, rendering skills is a plus, digital rendering will be a bonus, and of course an eye for design. You will be a CAD monkey for the first few years which can kill some of the passion at times, unless your superior design skills elevates your status into a design rather and a production personnel. Everybody finds their niche within a firm eventually.

If you are interested in planning (city/county/state; non-profit ie land trust, conservancy; private consulting), GIS skills will be great, negotiating EIS reports and certification will be great, experience with the inner workings of the govt. project approval process, a thesis that has a planning component will help as well. Your environmental science background will give you an edge in addressing anthropogenic issues with community growth and planning. And of course, know your politics.

If you want to be an artist, passion and good grant writing skills is a must

If you are into golf course design, be an expert in turf and water use/irrigation design. And play lots of golf.

If you are into academia, the future spells sustainability ie (LEED, eco design, water conservation), material science, multidisciplinary pursuits and artful design. You are already a multidisciplinary candidate by going into LA, never forget your past life as a scientist. It will serve you very well, especially in academia. It is also a good idea to have a couple of years in a private firm before joining academia to provide a solid foundation as you explore your pedagogy. I hate the fact that some of my past instructors espoused criticism on students work based wholly on conceptual and theoretical BS as their resume shows nothing but degrees from consecutive schools and nothing in btw.

As Jon says, this is not a get rich quick profession, but a labor of love… LA is gaining more weigh in the design world as more urban and rural areas are adopting more stringent landscape design policies to govern growth. The job market will be there when you graduate.

good Luck, have lots of fun with your MLA and your thesis, but make sure you acquire all the work related skills along the way, it is of utmost importance.

[Soo Wai-Kin]

In our office, we use autocad for line work, rasterize in photoshop, and color in photoshop, managing layers in autocad and photoshop allows efficient management for applying textures and shadows, for speed, we use strictly autocad to export a color rendering, just by standardizing your pen settings for plotting ie. transparency/screening, specific solid or gradient colors, eg. tree blocks with solid grey shadows, and color gradients fill for the tree, works really well. For quick renderings from hand sketches, I tend to scan and render/color in photoshop, good layer management helps with speed, lately, i have been using skecthup to export quick isos, elevation cad blocks and sections, for text and notation, i tend to do the rendering in photoshop, import the image into cad, and do notations there, really quick, CAD is so flexible these days, with the right pdf distiller, you can do a lot, acroplot is a good pdf plotter as it allows lines merge, all line work will show up under colors and gradient depending on how you organize layers in autocad, at the end of the day, as some of the other responses have noted, its about time, budget, and client expectations. CAD is awesome, skecthup is awesome, sticking to one software will only decrease efficiency, alwasy look for better software, there is always better and faster ways to achieve the same result, do some more research…. will upload some egs. when i have time…

[Soo Wai-Kin]

hoped you passed the exam, any new insights to what is already listed here? thanks.

[Soo Wai-Kin]

Mike,congrats on passing, i plan to take it in the next few months, what were the test subjects that you did not account for? Did all the tips on this discussion thus far covers the rest? Any tips will be helpful, thanks..

[Soo Wai-Kin]

As always, LARE exams do not conform to reality. Just apply LARE exam rules, follow all vignette instructions and you will do fine, ignore your instincts for what works in reality….

[Soo Wai-Kin]

Yes its worth the money, as you will never make the same mistake again, psychologically it helped as I hated the fact I have pay so much to learn from my mistakes. Overall is does provide some input on what’s critical fail versus borderline pass. However, If you knew you completely blew it, you are better off practicing on vignettes than pay for the redline.

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