Applying a pedagogy of interdisciplinary and cross-cultural collaboration as socio-ecological practice in landscape architecture education

In this Perspective Essay, we draw from our experience in socio-ecological practice—an interdisciplinary design studio combining University of Arizona (UArizona) graduate landscape architecture students and Universidad de Sonora (UNISON) undergraduate architecture students. We utilize a pilot pedagogical method to emphasize interdisciplinary and cross-cultural collaboration in landscape architecture education. We reflect on the method to examine how interdisciplinary and cross-cultural collaboration combine to create an innovative and rigorous approach that equips future landscape architecture researchers and practitioners with skills needed to respond to complex socio-ecological challenges. Having applied this pedagogy to guide a speculative design project in the northern Mexican city of Hermosillo, Sonora, we reflect on the benefits and challenges of the method for landscape architecture educators and students. Our reflections provide insights into how the method may foster the development of critical thinking, creative problem-solving, and social skills needed to achieve dynamic solutions for complicated problems. We identify critical lessons learned and comment on how the pedagogical method encourages students to critically examine the socio-ecological contexts in which they work, thereby enriching and strengthening their design thinking and outcomes. We discover that the inclusion of diverse disciplinary and cultural perspectives in design processes enhances students’ understanding of socio-ecological issues and that inadequate preparation for interdisciplinary and cross-cultural collaboration presents challenges that may attenuate such benefits. Finally, we provide recommendations for educators to inform forward-looking landscape architecture pedagogies that nurture the interdisciplinary and cross-cultural collaborative skills future practitioners will need to develop solutions for globally pressing socio-ecological challenges.