Doing a PhD
Australia Garden, image: John Gollings
Speaker: Kate Cullity
Landscape architects Kevin Taylor, Kate Cullity, and Perry Lethelan, the three founding directors of Taylor Cullity Lethlean (TCL), collectively undertook a PhD by practice from RMIT in Melbourne, Victoria. Australia.
The collective component of the PhD explores how our varied backgrounds in urban design, architecture, visual art, biology, and social planning have influenced our practice, engaging in a diversity of project types that extend beyond the conventions of landscape architecture.
We embarked on a PhD to reflect on this diversity and collaborative way of working, as well as to invigorate us and our studio to embark on new creative and commercial challenges.
Each of the three directors also wrote a separate essay and Kate Cullity’s was entitled More than Just Looking Good. Beauty, Aesthetic and Care.
The talk will discuss both the collective component of the PhD and the individual essay.
Kate Cullity
Director TCL Landscape Architecture and Urban Design
BSc Botany DipEd University of WA PhD RMIT FAILA
Kate is a founding director of TCL (Taylor Cullity Lethlean) and is a nationally and internationally recognised, published and awarded landscape architect, urban designer and artist, with particular skills in the design of public realm landscapes, public and private gardens and public art.
Kate has been a member of the core design team in many of TCL’s award-winning projects, including The Australian Garden in Victoria, which won the 2013 World Architecture Festival, ‘Landscape of the Year’ Award. She was an inaugural recipient of the Australian Landscape Architecture Institute (AILA) Edna Walling Award for Residential Design in 2006, and her garden projects have won the Institute of Landscape Architecture Excellence Award three times - in 2014, 2017, and 2019.
She has worked as both an artist and designer for a number of international art and garden festivals, including the Chaumont-sur-Loire Garden Festival in France, the Metis Garden Festival in Canada, and the Melbourne International Arts Festival in Australia. Her background in botany and strong personal interest in horticulture have led to her involvement in the planting design of sites throughout Australia.
Kate has taught at both secondary and tertiary levels and is most familiar with the education sector. She has completed a PhD, which reflects 25 years of TCL’s practice, as well as her interest in beauty, aesthetics, and care, and how these qualities can be aligned with the creation and appreciation of resilient cultural, social, and environmental landscapes.