27 September 2007 University mourns passing of landscape architecture pioneer - Sydney 'Charlie' Challenger 1922-2007

Sydney “Charlie” Challenger who died at Okuti Valley, near Little River, Canterbury, on 21 September 2007 was the driving force behind the establishment of landscape architecture as a discipline at Lincoln University and he was the inspiration behind the emergence of the profession of landscape architecture in New Zealand.

Born in Leeds and with a B.Sc. in Horticulture from Reading University, Charlie, as he is universally known, came to Lincoln College (as it then was) in 1956 as a lecturer in horticulture. During the Second World War he had served in the RAF. At Lincoln he spent his early days developing the diploma and degree programmes in horticulture and subsequently progressed through the ranks to Senior Lecturer then Reader. He retired from the staff in February 1983.

It was Charlie’s energetic development of horticulture at Lincoln that led him away from his initial field of specialisation into becoming a landscape architect.

Through field trips and forays into retail activity selling plants grown in the nursery at Lincoln to the trade to fund the purchase of equipment, Charlie built a strong rapport with the industry.

In the mid-1960s when he went on sabbatical to the United Kingdom a Canterbury nurseryman gave him a grant to spend on looking at European landscapes. He went to Scandinavia and was sufficiently impressed that two years later, with Lincoln’s blessing, he enrolled at the University of Newcastle for its Diploma in Landscape Design course under Professor Brian Hackett, an eminent British landscape architect and academic.

Charlie completed the diploma with distinction – only the second ever student to do so with distinction – and returned to Lincoln in 1968.

There was growing recognition of the need for landscape architecture education in New Zealand and with the support of the then Professor of Horticulture at Lincoln, “Mac” Morrison, Australasia’s first fulltime postgraduate course in landscape architecture was launched at Lincoln in 1969.

There were five enrolments that first year but by the mid-1970s student numbers had quadrupled and Landscape Architecture at Lincoln College was well under way.

Within its first five years the Landscape Architecture Section – then part of the Horticulture Department – and the associated Landscape Advisory Service, had 20 major design studies published. These were works of significant professional skill and merit produced with Charlie as the guiding influence, inspiration and taskmaster!

The course prescriptions for that early period show what a well-structured course the Dip LA was. Charlie went to pains to ensure that what he taught was relevant to New Zealand and that the diplomates Lincoln produced were well prepared for the trials and tribulations they would inevitably face in their pioneering role as part of the fledgling antipodean profession.

Charlie was acutely aware of the need for Lincoln’s Landscape Architecture Diploma to get wide recognition, nationally and internationally.

Apart from establishing a credible and defensible academic programme, Charlie also had to set up design studios with all their appropriate equipment, and this he did in two old prefabs of that era.

In those days the campus library had little material on landscape architecture so Charlie set up a large collection of reports, off-prints, journals and such other material as he could beg or borrow. Similarly he set up a large slide library for teaching purposes and both the slides and the way they are organised remain the backbone of the Landscape Architecture Group’s current slide library of some 20,000 images.

In another example of his resourcefulness, Charlie arranged for Peter Spooner a landscape architect and Associate Professor in Architecture at the University of New South Wales to be an external examiner for one of the Lincoln papers.

A very important outcome of this link with Australia was the recognition of the Dip LA by the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects as satisfying the requirements of Associate Membership of that institute by Lincoln diploma-holders without the need for further examination.

Because the Australian institute was already a constituent member of the International Federation of Landscape Architects this set the benchmark for international relativity with other courses in landscape architecture.

Charlie was already an individual member of the IFLA when the New Zealand Institute of Landscape Architects was formed in 1973. The New Zealand Institute soon embarked on its own examination process to establish professional (as distinct from academic) competency and subsequently applied for and gained membership of IFLA.

As Lincoln’s landscape architecture course consolidated it came to be applauded and appreciated by civil engineering professional groups and also by the Ministry of Works and other public agencies. They held the Dip LA in fine regard and became substantial employers of graduates.

Charlie set high academic and design studio standards. He was a benign slave-driver ever conscious that he and the diploma-holders emerging from his course would be under searching scrutiny. He would not compromise on professional standards.

In human terms Charlie had a unique presence and his students remember him with great fondness as a man of integrity and principle with a deep sense of justice and understanding and a warmth of personality that would be revealed at just the right moment.

In 2002 he became the first Lincoln University academic to be awarded an honorary doctorate, Doctor of Natural Resource honoris causa. It recognised his services and contributions to the discipline area he established at Lincoln University and pioneered in New Zealand.