A/Prof Margaret Grose

Biography

Margaret Grose works between design and ecological science. Margaret won the Faculty Teaching Award for Excellence in the Masters in 2011 for the subject Constructed Ecologies. She teaches ecological design and ecological theory for design in the Masters of Landscape Architecture and Bachelor of Environments. She is particularly interested in how ecology is taught to built environment students, and has recently been awarded a Universitas 21 Fellowship to examine this question internationally. Margaret has published across science, landscape architecture, and planning.

Margaret began her passion for landscape in Agricultural Science, focussing on processes in soils and water, and her PhD concerned the ecophysiology of Australian plants in relation to water stress and disease. Postdoctoral work was at Oxford University and theoretical ecology in the Mathematical Biology group at the University of Cambridge. She returned to Australia and majored in Independent Design in Landscape Architecture in 2001, followed by project work as an environmental scientist/landscape architect in an environmental firm, focusing on water, and later in suburban design. Her understanding of the ecology of the Australian flora and agricultural systems, particularly in relation to water, remain a key driver. Her students know that she has a great interest in paleohistory and how knowledge of past climates and landscape changes can, perhaps surprisingly, give us scaffolding for design today.

Current PhD supervision topics: Designing rivers in flux: integrating ecology and culture in river projects (with Dr Jillian Walliss, ABP). Debates and issues on colour and its perception in design (with Dr Jason Forte, Physiology). Buried and diverted, re-discovery and re-imagining: history and futures of inner urban waterways of Melbourne (with Dr David Nichols, ABP). Potential PhD subjects include: Ecological design of public open spaces and water systems in urban areas; Lessons to be learned for Australian climate change from the design of public open spaces in Mediterranean and near-arid cities outside of Australia; Resilience of planting designs for a drying southern Australia; Play spaces in child-care centres in Australia (with Child Health); The night-time impacts and history of digital billboards.