INNOLAND Project

​Landscape architecture is about creating great cities, streets, parks and public spaces – spaces that inspire healthy living and well being while protecting natural environments and pleasing people. Landscape Architecture is about creating safe, sustainable and resilient landscapes that evolve but endure over time. Landscape Architecture is perfectly positioned to respond to urgent issues of our time, e.g. mitigating climate change and contributing to the sustainability of both individual sites and cities as a whole.

Higher education institutions play a major role in educating Landscape Architects who will take decisions about our future environment. Although European regulation (e.g. concerning environment, competition in internal EU market or professional qualifications) has impact on the professional work of landscape architects across Europe, there are still no standards regarding the content of the European higher education of Landscape Architects, inducing barriers for lifelong learning, recognition, and mobility.

Common Training Framework (CTF) is knowledge, skills and competences necessary for the pursuit of a specific profession, defining what a person is able to know, to understand and to do. By harmonising the education and training requirements of landscape architecture professionals through the CTF, the EU will ensure free movement of professionals across the EU. The Directive 2013/55/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council on the recognition of professional qualifications and Regulation (PQD) emphasises, that Professional qualifications obtained under CTFs should automatically be recognised by the Member States.

Such actions are highly supported by the EU. The renewed EU agenda for HE, adopted by the Commission in May 2017, identifies enhanced mobility and cooperation in higher education among its key goals. The Paris Communiqué (2018), highlighting priority activities in this area for the coming years, calls for securing a sustainable future through higher educations. These ambitions are in line with the goal of the EU to create European Education Area by 2025, to promote mobility and academic recognition of qualifications for all EU citizens, leading to free movement of workers - one of the four fundamental freedoms of the Union.

Herewith, InnoLAND aims to facilitate transparency and recognition of skills and qualifications of landscape architecture professionals in the EU by developing the Common Training Framework for the Profession along with relevant tools to support its implementation.

InnoLAND, co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union is officially launched at project kick-off meeting on 3 November 2020! In this project which is led by our Delegate from Lithuania Gintaras Stauskis, professor at Vilnius Gediminas Technical University (Vilnius Tech) Lithuania, IFLA Europe is a partner together with Aalto University Finland, Le Notre Institute Netherlands, Szent Istvan University Hungary, University of Evora Portugal and Technische Universitaet Wien Austria. Participation of various partners from all over Europe in this project will ensure a balanced opinion about Landscape Architecture Education.

The specific objectives include:
i) implementing PQD requirements to foster automatic recognition of LA profession in Europe;
ii) establishing pan-European quality standards for LA study programmes and homogenizing landscape architecture education in Europe; and
iii) developing an exemplar master study programme framework in line with the European CTF.

To harmonise the higher education of the landscape architecture professionals, InnoLAND targets higher educations institutions and landscape architecture schools in the EU. Additionally, practicing landscape architects, European and national Landscape Architecture associations and regulatory bodies will be involved to achieve the aims and objectives of the project.

The key strength of InnoLAND project is the high pan-European ambition and the strong consortium endowed with means to achieve it. The consortium consists of 5 Higher Educations institutions, covering geographical Europe from the North to the South - Finland, Lithuania, Hungary, Austria, Portugal – contributing with knowledge and experience on varying landscapes, study programmes, regulation of the profession, and European mobility experience. Additionally, two landscape architects’ associations join the project to ensure access to the most prominent landscape architecture knowledge and education (LE:NOTRE, the Netherlands), the target group of landscape architecture professionals, and access to the responsible bodies in the European Commission (IFLA Europe, Belgium).

The project envisages expert workshops, analysis and stakeholder involvement to develop CTF for the profession of landscape architects in Europe. To secure the implementation of CTF, the consortium will provide national regulatory bodies with recommendations, and higher education institutions will be offered an efficient up-to date self-assessment tool and a module-based advanced master study programme.

CTF will finally fulfill the requirement imposed by Art. 49a of the PQD and serve as the most important instrument for quality and competitiveness of higher educations with regard to the profession of landscape architects in the EU. InnoLAND will also result in a developed basis for recognition of landscape architecture study programmes by IFLA Europe and ECLAS, leading to increased advanced learning and study opportunities for landscape architects. The fulfillment of an important precondition for automatic recognition of landscape architecture professional qualification based on Art. 49a of the PQD will contribute to increased mobility of high-level LA professionals across the EU; it will improve the quality and global competitiveness of the European HE. It will also affect reaching Sustainable Development Goals and SDG Agenda 2030 as adopted by the UN (2015), the Paris Agreement on Climate Change (2016) and the European Green Deal (2019).

Specific objectives of the INNO-land project:

implementing Professional Qualifications Directive requirements to foster automatic recognition of LA profession in Europe;

establishing pan-European quality standards for LA study programmes and homogenizing landscape architecture education in Europe;

developing an exemplary master study programme framework in line with the European Common Training Framework.

Collaborative process by ECLAS and IFLA Europe for the Common Training Framework
The existing frameworks for landscape architecture education that are established by ECLAS and IFLA Europe form important parts of the Common Training Framework for Landscape Architecture. At the same time, there is a need to update these to meet current and future challenges. For this, the InnoLAND project will engage a collaborative process with representatives of ECLAS and IFLA Europe to make sure that there is a solid base that is co-created by the relevant stakeholders.

For an overview of the history of education guidance in Europe, including the tuning process and other projects, you may read this article.

How to get involved?

If you have a specific question about the project, please contact us via office@ln-institute.org.

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Documentation of the first INNO-Land Online Workshop

Here you find the recordings of the kick-off of the collaborative process on the Common Training Framework (CTF) for Landscape
Architecture held on Friday 15th of January 2021.

For more information about project please visit: https://ec.europa.eu/programmes/erasmus-plus/projects/eplus-project-details/#project/2020-1-LT01-KA203-078086