Teaching and learning Landscape Ecology to Landscape Architects in Italy : toward protective, adaptative, redundant landscape design

Some words are more and more used by different disciplines to focus on contemporary challenges, for exampe “sustainability” and “resilience”, becoming trendy slogans, but the real understanding of these concepts in Landscape Ecology is necessary to avoid their loss of significance, and to add effectiveness to ecological based projects and actions. The collaborative partnership between Landscape Ecology and Landscape Architecture is a fundamental opportunity. Landscape Ecology is a necessary topic for landscape architects' education and its application becomes a tool for landscape projects. A good landscape architect can play a significative role in the promotion of people's appreciation of landscape in terms of resources (cfr. Almo Farina " theory of resources"). Starting from the experience, of more than 30 years, by the Genoese Landscape Architecture School, from the theoric teaching by Almo Farina and Vittorio Ingegnoli (see Ecofield theory, spatial configuration of functional elements , shifting mosaic, BTC measurement, Landscape Bionomics), to the applicative courses and experimental design of landscapes at different dimensions, the discipline of Landscape Ecology is a clear guide to the understanding of landscape configuration, and of its critical actual aspects. In the actual main Italian Schools of Landscape Architecture (Genoa/Turin/Milan, Florence, Rome, Milan) a fundamental role is given to Landscape Ecology education. Particularly in the Genoa/Turin/Milan Master Degree in Landscape Architecture, the experimental applicative approach to design by Landscape Ecology (in the brilliant courses of Applied Landscape Ecology by Gioia Gibelli and Luigino Pirola, with the help of Applied Botany), gives necessary tools to face the challenges of contemporary society, with particular reference to resources and needs, such as water, food production, ecosystemic services, socio-ecological relations, safetiness of everyday landscapes.