Back to news & events

News

LAA Profile: Dennis Scott

Posted 30 04 2020

in News

Dennis Scott on Waiheke Island in Auckland’s Hauraki Gulf.
Dennis Scott on Waiheke Island in Auckland’s Hauraki Gulf.
“I went to Auckland University to essentially become a planner but I soon found out that planners didn’t really design towns and open spaces.”

Few landscape architects have been in the job as long as Dennis Scott. The founder of DJ Scott and Associates has been in the business for around five decades now..

The award winning veteran told LAA he turned to the landscape architecture profession after working in horticulture and was inspired by family members who were architects.

“I went to Auckland University to essentially become a planner but I soon found out that planners didn’t really design towns and open spaces.”

He then saw an advertisement at the architecture school about “this new course at Lincoln College, landscape architecture, and I knew that was where I was going to head.”

The rest, as they say, is history and in the video below Dennis tells us that it is the possibility of improving the land that drives and inspires him in his work today.

D J Scott Associates were the winners of the enduring category in the 2017 Resene NZILA Pride of Place Landscape Awards for the Waiheke Island Western Entrance Headland.

That landscape response covers 430ha and spanned a number of projects and years throughout its development.