Seeing Landscape Through Cross-Cultural Eyes: Embracing a Transcultural Lens Toward Multilingual Design Approaches in the Landscape Studio

Abstract

This article reflects on the value of cultivating transcultural awareness in design education. The term “transcultural lens” is derived from the emerging critical concept of transculturality, or the intermingling of one’s domestic culture with many other foreign cultures. This concept relates to the melding and mixing of cultural elements expressed by a group of American students in the University of Maryland’s Landscape Architecture Program who worked on the Taiwanese Chi Chi Earthquake Memorial Park Competition design. When these students examined their own American lens in designing a Taiwanese memorial park, the transformation of this lens allowed them to manipulate design patterns and languages of their native culture (American) and the newly encountered culture (Taiwanese) in an innovative yet sensitive way. This generated a new design approach that I am calling American-yet-Taiwanese; that not only distinguished the unique quality and practices of different cultures, but also blended these cultures together in an evolutionary way.