About LE:NOTRE
Landscape architecture is both a relatively young and an unusually diverse academic discipline.
It integrates a wide spectrum of subject areas and operates at different scales of time and space, as well as bridging the historic gap between the creative arts and the natural sciences, and incorporating aspects of the humanities and technology. This diversity is reflected in the wide range of higher education environments in which teaching and research takes place across Europe. These include Colleges of Art and Universities of Technology, Architecture Schools and Agricultural Universities, as well as 'general' universities and Universities of Professional Education. While the first degree programmes were established in northern Europe (Norway 1919 and Germany 1929) many countries, ranging from Austria and Iceland to Spain and the Baltic Republics have only set up formal university level education since the early 1990s. Even in countries where a longer tradition of education has existed, such as Norway, Germany, Portugal, Poland or Turkey, new courses have been established in recent years, and in France, for example, a new programme opened its doors to students in Lille only at the beginning of the current academic year.LE:NOTRE, the first Thematic Network Project in Landscape Architecture, responded to this situation and has taken an important initial step in documenting the current state of the art, seeking common ground and building bridges between the various parts of the discipline and the varied traditions which have developed in very different European contexts over the past decades. A detailed survey of institutions, degree programmes, their component course units and the teachers and researchers involved was carried out using a specially designed web site (www.le-notre.org). This has been developed to provide an interactive range of communication tools aimed at supporting the development of a coherent and open European academic community. A sophisticated glossary database has been set up, which now contains a wide range of terms and definitions in over 30 languages. Other databases established so far cover specialist literature, academic journals, relevant aspects of European environmental policy, web links and landscape design case studies, and provide common resources for all members, which it is planned to develop further. The close and growing involvement of the Network in the Tuning Project has also provided a structured basis for the discussion of the definition of generic and subject specific competences for the discipline.
The number of participating institutions in the LE:NOTRE Project has increased successively, from 73 higher education institutions from eligible countries at the start, to 101 in the current proposal, although the degree of their involvement has varied considerably. Important contributions have also come from a growing number of member institutions from non-eligible countries, from partner organisations representing the key stakeholders in the education process at the European level, and from representatives of related academic disciplines. Although the momentum generated by the Project has been somewhat dampened recently, for reasons outside its control: first by the late payment of the project grant for the third year (some seven months after the start of the contract) and subsequently by the reduction in the grant applied for the Dissemination Project by one third, the LE:NOTRE Thematic Network Project has made an ambitious start in establishing a strong European identity for the discipline. Particular attention is drawn to two significant Dissemination Project outputs: the foundation of a new European academic journal and the first steps in the establishment of a new pan-European partnership between municipal authorities and universities working in the field of the urban landscape (see www.le-notre.org).
