Julian Raxworthy is Associate Professor and Discipline Lead: landscape architecture in the Faculty of Art and Design at the University of Canberra. Initially working as a gardener & landscaper, he trained as a horticulturalist at Ryde TAFE, later becoming a landscape architect, graduating with his undergraduate degree (with honours) and research master’s degree (by design) in landscape architecture, both from RMIT, Australia. He has a PhD from the University of Queensland, where he is an Honorary Associate Professor with the ATCH (Architecture, Theory, Criticism and History) Research Centre.

As a registered landscape architect in Australia, Julian worked extensively with Aspect Studios, both in Melbourne where he helped develop the practice as Design Manager, and in Sydney, where he co-founded their internationally recognised Sydney Studio. Later, he worked as Principal Landscape Architect for award-winning architecture practices such as Donovan Hill in Brisbane (now part of Bligh Voller Neild), and most recently for Wolff Architects, in Cape Town, South Africa where he is also a registered landscape architect. 

Prior to joining the University of Canberra, he was tenured faculty at RMIT University, Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Brisbane and at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, where he has taught into landscape architecture, urban design and architecture programs. He was also steering committee member for the M.Phil (Southern Urbanism) for the African Centre for Cities (ACC).  He has presented key note lectures at the IV European Biennial of Landscape Architecture in Barcelona, LOCUS ISTE in Denmark and EASY GOING, at the Academie van Bouwkunst, Amsterdam. He has also taught internationally, notably at the University of Virginia, where he organised a Myles H.Thaler symposium and was visiting professor, but also as a guest at universities in Europe, including three times at the École Nationale Supérieure de Paysage (ENSP) Versailles, where he was recently Visiting Professor in 2019 & 2020. In 2020, he was part of the Sylvester Baxter Lecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design entitled “Plants in the Design Imagination”. 

A co-founder of Kerb, the student landscape architecture journal from RMIT (now in its 26^th edition), he writes regularly about contemporary landscape projects, in Australia for Landscape Architecture Australia, Monument, Architecture Australia and Architectural Review Australia, and internationally in Topos, SCAPE and LAM. In 2004, he co-edited The MESH Book: Landscape & Infrastructure,published by RMIT Press, and in 2011 Sun publishers in Amsterdam published Sunburnt: Landscape Architecture in Australia, which he co-authored. His most recent book is Overgrown: practices between landscape architecture and gardening, which was published in 2018 by The MIT Press, and was supported by a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. He has lectured widely on the book, first in 2018 on the east coast USA at Harvard GSD, the University of Pennsylvania, Penn State, Cornell University, as well as at the Graham Foundation in Chicago, and in 2019 on the west coast USA at University of Southern California, Cal Poly San Louis Obispo and at the University of Oregon, and also in Australia, at the University of Queensland, University of Adelaide, University of Technology Sydney, and as a keynote at the 2019 Festival of Landscape Architecture in Melbourne. His next book will be entitled Latent City: the landscape architecture of land tenure.

▪ Decolonzing landscape architecture and non-western cities/urban design

▪ Landscape architectural & land tenure; urban coding and landscape in urban morphology

▪ Relationship between landscape architecture and practices of gardening/maintenance

▪ Parametric landscape architecture and urban design with Revit and Grasshopper

▪ Landscape design studio, particularly design process and project resolution

▪ History & theory of landscape architecture & urban design

▪ Design research / practice based research

https://www.julianraxworthy.com/