Learning About Relationships

About the Book

Learning about Relationships: Metaphysical Exercises for Landscape Designers details the relationship exercises that Dr. Okajima has conducted with his landscape design students. The author also addresses the subject of spirituality within the academic environment. His book illustrates the interactive work he has done with his class, a way of design that allows the unexpected and the positive to occur. If we do not aggressively tackle the act of design, Dr. Okajima suggests, but instead we willingly wait for something more organic to grow, this creates room to expand meaning and possibility within that design. This, Dr. Okajima teaches, is the road to be traveled when seeking ecological balance. For the first time, and based upon his own teaching experiences, Dr. Okajima in Learning about Relationships: Metaphysical Exercises for Landscape Designers openly shares his teaching philosophy, along with specific classroom exercises

About the Author

Naokata Okajima, Ph.D. was born in Japan, where he studied agricultural economics and architecture as an undergraduate student. In graduate school, he studied landscape architecture, earning his Ph.D. in 1997. He studied theoretical and practical views on social phenomena from an economics perspective, writing his doctoral dissertation on the relationships among modern Japanese literature, art, and the character of the landscape. Dr. Okajima has been teaching at Minami Kyusyu University in Japan since 2001, and he is currently pursuing his interest in providing workshops to find new and liberating ways of learning and working. He is especially concerned with cultivating a metaphysical sphere that will nurture the ability to create new physical expressions.