The mandate of the British Columbia Society of Landscape Architects is to uphold public health, safety and welfare as it relates to the professional practice of landscape architecture in British Columbia, while furthering and maintaining proper standards of professional practice.
Landscape architects are creative and technical professionals who perform a key role in the design and construction of open space at a range of scales and complexity. The contribution of a landscape architect to any given project begins with consultations with other designers and technical experts. After bringing together the relevant background information and data sets, landscape architects develop plans, models and design solutions that address physical and legal constraints, along with public health safety and welfare. The resulting construction documents and technical specifications often include aspects of civil engineering, green infrastructure design, urban design, public art, garden architecture, soil science and horticulture. This work is accomplished in the context of government regulations, potential liability and current best practices in construction administration. Landscape architects are also uniquely placed to identify unforeseen environmental risks during design and construction that may not be visible to other professionals.
As part of the Work BC Career Trek Program Pearl Yip, MBCSLA, was featured in a short video about landscape architecture. Watch Pearl provide information on the profession - it was very well done. Thank you Pearl and the team at Work BC! Watch now.
The BCSLA is represented nationally by The Canadian Society of Landscape Architects (www.csla-aapc.ca). Canadian Landscape Architects typically graduate from accredited professional degree programs which are offered at 6 universities across the country: https://www.csla-aapc.ca/career-resources/accredited-university-programs
BCSLA requires new members to write the Landscape Architectural Registration Exam (LARE) which is offered by the Council of Landscape Architectural Registration Boards (CLARB) https://www.clarb.org/. The BCSLA collaborates with the American Society of Landscape Architects (www.asla.org), which represents the profession in the USA, where individual practicing professionals are licensed at the state level. All 50 states have recognized that regulation of landscape architecture is necessary to protect the public health, safety, and welfare (47 states have Practice Act and three states have a Title Act). The BCSLA is represented internationally by International Federation of Landscape Architects (www.iflaworld.com) which is made up of 77 member associations.
