ABSTRACT
DesignLab is an interdisciplinary group of researchers, educators, landscape architects, and designers who emphasise the use of design methods to build possibility and complex grounded contexts. As an approach to teaching designers, the DesignLab seeks to empower students to be innovative and lateral in their transformation of landscape. In the DesignLab teaching approach, collaboration is fostered by physical space. The form and layout of space is designed to promote interaction and exchange. The DesignLab approach re–thinks and challenges some of the conventional studio teaching strategies. It also offers a challenge to some of the broader institutional constraints that can prove limiting to the adoption of approaches such as collaboration. While the DesignLab approach is offered here as a teaching strategy, it also speaks to broader professional and disciplinary contexts. It is an approach that resonates with professional settings, encouraging questioning of briefs, for example — rather than accepting a brief that is given by a client.
