The Landscape Institute (LI) is the United Kingdom professional body for landscape architects. The LI was founded in 1929 as the Institute of Landscape Architects (ILA), and was granted a Royal Charter in 1997. The institute aims to promote landscape architecture, and to regulate members activities to uphold the standards of the profession. The LI has a Code of Conduct which all members must abide by.
Its members are engaged in using, creating and conserving landscapes, and include a range of disciplines, from landscape designers to conservationists, masterplanners to plant scientists, urban designers to environmental managers. These disciplines are divided between the three divisions of the Institute: Landscape Design, Landscape Science, and Landscape Management. Members have a duty under the Code of Conduct to create landscapes which are aesthetically pleasing, functional, economic to create and manage, and which embrace cultural and heritage aspects well as considerations associated with the natural environment and conservation.
Membership of the LI is by examination. Candidates must be licentiate members of the LI for two years following graduation from an accredited degree course, before sitting the exam. The written exam and interview with senior members of the profession has recently been replaced by the Pathway to Chartership overseen by a mentor and LI appointed supervisor where the candidates pathway of learning is followed by an interview with senior members of the profession, once the candidate has attained an agreed level of competancy. These exams were formerly known as 'Part IV' of the Landscape Institute's own design examination. Parts I to III were replaced by the system of accredited degree courses in the mid 1980s.
Only fully qualified members of the LI are permitted to use the protected title 'Chartered Landscape Architect'. Chartered membership of the LI is internationally recognised as a badge of excellence. There were 4,886 members of the LI in 2005 of whom 2986 were full corporate members (CMLI) and of these 2847 were design division members, 262 were management and 44 were science. It is therefore a small profession in the United Kingdom compared with say architecture or town planning, but it is a growing profession.
Post-war, the growth of landscape architecture has been led by government legislation, such as the New Towns Act (1946) which required landscape masterplans to be prepared, and the European Community Environmental Assessment Directive (1985) which has led to the increase in environmental impact assessments. From the 1950s to the 1980s, the public sector, particularly local authorities, were the largest employers of landscape architects, with a minority working in private practice. Today the private sector is the larger employer, although the largest single employer of landscape architects in the UK are the charitable Groundwork Trusts, which are taking over local authority space management and provision responsibilities.
Thomas Mawson was the first President of the Institute of Landscape Architects (ILA) in 1929, and was also one of the first professionals in the UK (along with Patrick Geddes) to use 'landscape architect' as a professional title. Before becoming President of the ILA Mawson had been a President of the Town Planning Institute. His own career had developed from garden design to urban design.
The LI publishes the professional journal Landscape (formerly Landscape Design). The LI is a member of the International Federation of Landscape Architects [1].
In 2008 the LI launched a nationwide campaign to increase the number of Landscape Architects in the UK. The campaign, entitled I want to be a landscape architect, has a separate website to the LI and is primarily focused on increasing the number of postgraduate and undergraduate students studying on LI accredited courses. The campaign is projected to run for 5 years.
