8 October 2001 Exhibition by students on the ‘threshold’

Innovative landscape designs for a variety of sites throughout New Zealand go on public exhibition in Christchurch over 20-24 October as Lincoln University’s graduating class of landscape architecture students prepare to cross the threshold from the campus to professional practice.

The exhibition, appropriately titled Threshold, features the work of 37 students and it is being held in Christchurch’s Arts Centre in the William Sutton and Lovell-Smith rooms.

Sites featured in the displays range from Dargaville in Northland (the town centre) to Kaitangata in South Otago (Wangaloa Coal Mine) and include design solutions for marine reserves, a sewage treatment site, industrial locations, a cemetery, a race course, a flood zone and many other locations.

"The students take what is often a forgotten or neglected landscape and create a place that would be fun, enjoyable and exciting to visit, perhaps ecologically sustainable, and perhaps capable of generating economic and social opportunity," says Neil Challenger, the students’ examiner.

All aspects of the public exhibition are organised by the students, from the budget to the installation of the exhibits in the gallery.

Plans, drawings and models are featured in the exhibition with the various works expressing cohesive "packages" of design ideas for the chosen sites, from broad scale planning to design elements that reveal intentions at a detailed level.

"Much of the most exciting and innovative contemporary work in landscape architecture internationally is focused on reclaiming and recovering landscape," says Lincoln University’s Professor of Landscape Architecture, Simon Swaffield, "and this is well reflected in this year’s major design exhibition by our graduating class."

Ian Collins, Journalist, Lincoln University, Canterbury, New Zealand.