One sunny morning in April, students from UCLA Extension's Landscape Architecture certificate program gathered for a tour of Sage Hill, an outdoor learning space and the last piece of undeveloped land on the UCLA campus in Westwood.
Their goal: brainstorm ways to make the area more accessible and welcoming to the UCLA community while conserving its abundant native plants and wildlife.
The activity was part of the program’s 16th annual charette, a day-long project in which students work with a client to observe a landscape and come up with design proposals to improve the area. This year, students were asked to present their ideas to the faculty of UCLA’s Institute of Environment and Sustainability, which oversees Sage Hill.
Stephanie Landregan, director of UCLA Extension’s Landscape Architecture program, said the event gives students a unique, hands-on learning experience that encourages teamwork and collaboration.
“We hold this event each year to create community and give students the opportunity to interact and learn from each other in a way that mirrors how they’ll work in the real world,” Landregan said.
This year’s charette offered students an opportunity to connect with both their campus and their peers. The Sage Hill space is intended to provide hands-on teaching and undergraduate research opportunities for students in all fields, connecting them with nature and the peoples who hold traditional knowledge of the region. For the event, students from different cohorts were divided together into groups to ensure they had the chance to meet and interact.
“We have the third-year students be the principals or the lead, and they have to organize the first- and second-year students based upon their skill sets on how they’re going to use them to meet the deadline,” Landregan said. “It’s a terrific learning experience.”
The day began with a tour of Sage Hill conducted by Andy Kleinhesselink, the site’s managing director. Students learned more about the history of the land as well as the native plants and animals in the area. They were also given a briefing on what the clients hoped to incorporate into the landscape. Since this year’s charette was held on the UCLA campus itself, students were given an extra degree of access, said Andrew Steiger, a third-year student in the program.
“We got a huge tour that lasted a while, and you were kind of immersed in the environment for a lot longer,” said Steiger. “It adds a lot of value.”
After their tour, the groups were given time to prepare their final presentations. Their proposals had to include a site analysis, covering information such as topography and native species, as well as detailed maps of Sage Hill and sketches illustrating how they would implement their ideas.
Though the charette is not worth class credit, the practical experience of completing a full design project over the course of a single day helps students understand their potential and feel confident that they can thrive pursuing landscape architecture as a career, said Landregan.
“The students are all so impressed with each other, and they come up to their peers and they go, ‘How did you do this?’” she said.
As for the future of Sage Hill, Kleinhesselink said that the students’ projects offered fresh inspiration for what’s possible. Though not all of the proposed concepts would be feasible due to budget or other constraints, he said, it was valuable to get a different perspective on how the space could be used.
Meanwhile, for the students who took part in the charette, creating a vision for the future of the landscape and presenting their ideas in front of a client added to a sense of pride, said Steiger.
“It was really nice to watch the stakeholder’s reactions to the designs,” he said. “The folks that are managing the site actively, for them to see what we had done, I think it made them really happy. So that was cool.”
Alicia Bartoli-Arnold, a second-year student who traveled from Oakland to take part in the charette, echoed that sentiment. The event not only gave her a chance to meet classmates in person and feel more connected to her school, she said, but it also helped give her an idea of what to expect from her career after graduation.
“This is a way that really will push you forward in your practice,” Bartoli-Arnold said. “I appreciate that our program is getting that real world, lived experience as a core part of what we do.”
Learn more about UCLA Extension’s Landscape Architecture certificate program.
