UF Landscape Architecture Hosts Sketch Walk for World Landscape Architecture Month

April is World Landscape Architecture Month, a time to celebrate landscape architects and their impact in shaping our everyday environments. This year, World Landscape Architecture Month is celebrating “Landscape Architecture in Action”, highlighting how landscape architecture transforms ideas into places that support health, climate resilience, and daily life. To join in on the celebration, students from across campus came together for a sketch walk hosted by the University of Florida Department of Landscape Architecture. 

The event aimed to draw in students who might not be familiar with landscape architecture while providing a leisurely learning experience observing the landscapes of UF’s campus. Landscape architects often incorporate sketch walks as an initial step in their design process, creating a landscape with paper and pencil before setting out to create the real thing. 

Led by student organizations SCASLA and Understory with support from faculty, the sketch walk guided participants to look for key design elements in each landscape they encountered, and explained the foundational concepts behind good design and how to spot it. 

“We wanted to create an opportunity for students outside of our department to see the world through the lens of a landscape architect,” said Morgan Hucke, media manager for SCASLA. “We hope to continue hosting activities like this into the future to bring in more students with different perspectives to see how we can all learn from each other.”

The event took place in Plaza of the Americas, and free sketchbooks were provided for each attendee.

“By approaching design in such a simple and engaging way, we hope to inspire curiosity and creativity in each participant,” said Instructional Assistant Professor Aishwarya Shankar. “Activities like this show that design is not just part of a profession, but a way of seeing and interacting with the world around us.”