Category: Plant and Soil Sciences
Alumni Lexi Dart uses her skills from UD’s landscape architecture program to pursue her Ph.D.
September 10, 2024 Written by Nya Wynn | Photos courtesy of Lexi Dart
From dreaming of fairways to shaping future landscapes, recent University of Delaware graduate Lexi Dart is now pursuing a Ph.D. in design, specializing in landscape architecture. Dart’s journey began with ambitions of golf course design. Then a spark for landscape architecture redirected her path, leading her to blend civil engineering with a passion for environmental design.
Dart started her undergraduate career in civil engineering with the plan of pursuing golf course design. Once she found out about UD’s Bachelor in Landscape Architecture (BLA) program, she switched the next semester.
“I ended up working with my current advisor when she was still a professor at Delaware, and I now have a very different focus from what initially brought me to UD in the first place,” Dart said.
Through the landscape architecture degree, Dart was able to combine her interest in site engineering and her skills in design and community outreach.
“I’ve always been into design and this is such a nice way to piece together design, environmental science and how we're thinking about climate change,” Dart said. “It encompasses a lot of different aspects of the landscape and community and addresses a lot of different problems, which I really like.”
Through the bachelors in landscape architecture degree at UD, students are required to take classes on design, engineering, environmental sustainability, plant science and communication.
According to Eric Bardenhagen, this wide breadth of courses provides students with the ability to create innovative designs and solutions for environmental problems, as well as the capacity to relay their ideas to the community.
“The UD BLA program has a core curriculum of 26 courses in the areas of graphic representation and design, construction methods, plant materials, history and theory and in professional leadership,” he said. “This breadth of courses allows our students to take on increasingly challenging design problems in our six design studios.”
“You really do get everything in the program at Delaware,” Dart said. “It allowed me to see different aspects of the field that you wouldn't typically get from a design driven degree, which has really worked well for me now.”
Dart currently uses Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and works with remote sensing data to analyze environmental factors like vegetation and perform data-driven mapping.
“I do a lot of work with coastal communities, thinking about how we can measure aspects of the landscape to drive design and then also developing metrics that enable us to measure how design impacts a space,” Dart said.
Dart’s work with coastal communities started while she was still an undergraduate at UD. Working under Bardenhagen in the Coastal Resilience Design Lab (CRDS), she used data driven-mapping to address different issues in local coastal communities. She also did work with the Center for Applied Demography and Survey Research (CADSR) where she helped evaluate potential flood damage costs for future flood emergencies.
“The Coastal Resilience Design Studio offers opportunities for students to collaborate with other students in disciplines such as environmental science, civil engineering, and public policy,” Bardenhagen said. “This work allows students to engage directly with community leaders and residents and is a springboard for the types of experiences they will engage in on a daily basis in their future careers.”
One of the larger impacts of landscape architecture careers is how a design, installation, or building will impact the surrounding environment and community.
“I love the community impact that we can have, I was lucky enough to work with some communities on developing what they need and then presenting our installation,” Dart said. “Especially in small communities in Delaware that don't always get the funding or the attention they need, that's what I found really rewarding.”
Having the ability to see how different designs can impact communities and analyze exactly what the community and the environment surrounding them need in a design is imperative to being a landscape architect.
“Each project is unique in the mix of ecosystem needs, human and social needs and often cultural factors,” Bardenhagen said. “Our courses are not intended to show students how to design for only a specific set of project types, but rather how to use a rigorous analysis and design process that can bring about creative solutions for each unique challenge they face in their time at UD and in their future professions.”