Welcome to the first instalment of our Staff Spotlight series. We're pleased to introduce Senior Lecturer in Design, Steve Terry.
Steve has seen many changes in the approaches to both the subject and the teaching of landscape architecture and garden design over the years. He has a lifelong interest in The Arts and Nature and is passionate about the way design in our open spaces can bring them together to meet contemporary needs for society and the environment.
Steve says, "Our students are at the forefront of making better places and stronger, more resilient landscapes in a time of climate change. Landscape architecture and garden design, sometimes considered to be just an aesthetic pastime, is so much more than this, and students today are preparing to enter a profession to make positive changes to the world. They are learning to use design as a tool to increase biodiversity, mitigate climate change and create healthier places for people to live."
"Technology is playing a crucial role in this; satellite imagery, predictive flood modelling tools, ecological data sets and a range of 2D and 3D drawing and modelling software packages that design students use, find The Arts and Nature being considered and combined in ways that we might only have imagined possible."
As Writtle University College continues to deliver its design programmes during this time of COVID-19, Steve, colleagues and their students are using new technologies to stay in touch and continue teaching. Steve says, "We are constantly finding new ways to communicate and share ideas, that's just what designers do.
"Online teaching has provided opportunities. Students working in the virtual studio can critique and draw together even though we are miles apart. It also means that we can work toward our end of year show in May and gather virtually to celebrate! We are finding positive ways to carry on doing what we love."
For more information, go to https://writtle.ac.uk/UG-Landscape-Architecture-and-Garden-Design