Each year we welcome students into the Honours, Masters and Research programs in landscape architecture at the Department of Architecture, UP. These postgraduate offerings are taught by four passionate academics, who also have experience in landscape design and architecture practice. The design studios on offer are also guided by professional landscape architects who teach part-time in the department.

Professor Christina (Ida) Breed is a registered professional landscape architect and associate professor at the Department of Architecture at the University of Pretoria. Her applied research spans her practice and academic experience and unites concepts of ecosystem services with human values. She contributes to the limited body of work focusing on landscape designers as actors in social-ecological systems through green infrastructure planning and design. She is a rated researcher through the National Research Foundation and has been collaborating in internationally funded green infrastructure research projects in the City of Tshwane, since 2021. Her projects aim to build greater capacity in young graduates, within communities, and across sectors, to mobilize urban socio-ecological well-being..

Dr Karen Botes is a Landscape Architect with extensive experience in landscape architecture and environmental impact assessment.  She founded and successfully managed a micro-enterprise in Gauteng for 20 years, after which she joined the University of Pretoria as a lecturer in January 2019.  Karen was the principal landscape architect for numerous green-star projects involving green infrastructure for enhanced ecosystem services.  Her research focus entails growing Traditional African Vegetable (TAV) species in modular living wall systems (LWSs) for food security.  Career highlights include the 2020 Department of Architecture and EBIT Faculty Teaching and Learning award.

Dr Johan N. Prinsloo specialises in the history of landscape architecture, with emphasis on the relationship between literary and physical gardens. This interest was sparked during his Master’s dissertation, stadskrif (2006) that explored ways in which text can be used as a design tool. This was followed by experience in the practice of greeninc where he had the opportunity to explore the relationship between narratives and landscapes in award-winning projects like Freedom Park and Cornice Bay. Employed at the University of Pretoria since 2009, he has continued to develop a theoretical framework that seeks to account for the experience of enchantment in real-and-imagined spaces. Dr Prinsloo completed his doctoral thesis on the role of classical mythology in the design of gardens, from Antiquity to present.    

Dr Dayle Shand is passionate about environmental justice, and urban place-making. She received her PhD from the University of Pretoria in 2023. Her topic included human-nature relationships in cities, and environmental justice legacies in the City of Tshwane. She is a lecturer and professionally registered landscape architect with experience primarily in public sector projects. She has been lecturing since 2017. Her current research interests include animal-aided design, human-nature relationships in the built environment, and environmental and spatial justice. Currently she is working towards developing a digital repository for landscape related narratives and information in South Africa.