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To become a landscape architect you'll need to complete a degree from an accredited landscape architecture school, followed by an internship of at least two years, and pass a set of five exams (the Landscape Architect Registration Exam). The process can take as little as 5 or 6 years or much longer, depending on your particular path and experiences. (If you have worked in the profession in some capacity for 7 years but do not have a degree from an accredited institution, you many be able to write the exams and start an internship if your experience is accepted as 'equivalent' to schooling.)
To break it down further, to be a landscape architect you'll need:
- First, to be really interested in construction, plants, ecology, cities, sociology, environmental psychology, how cities function, design, art, architecture, the environment, urbanism, science, engineering, travel, tourism, history, culture, or maybe ski resorts, golf courses, or playgrounds or parks.
- Then get some experience gardening, working at a nursery, building in-ground swimming pools, working at a design firm, building fences, drawing, creating with concrete, or building cities with Lego.
- Then apply to design school. Get accepted. Go.
- Work really, really hard, to the point of sleep-deprivation-induced hallucinations in studio. Read everything. Finish your thesis. Dream big.
- Stress a little about student debt and a profession that doesn't pay as well as, say, business, law, medicine, accounting, financial advising, sales, investing, computer programming, or running a pizza joint. But then forge ahead anyway!
- Kindly remind your parents that you are specializing in the civic act of architecture and city-building, one of the greatest cultural traditions that our species has ever developed. No, you are not a landscaper.
- Intern for two years minimum while you write your LARE exams.
- Then you'll become a fully-licensed landscape architect. You'll get your stamp, the official seal used to ratify drawings making them official legal documents.
- And you're off to enjoy a life-long process of learning and creating. Congratulations!
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