Hosted by the ICAA Northern California Chapter
This three-hour course explores the enduring principles that shape successful classical landscape design. Through diagramming, precedent analysis, and a hands-on design exercise, participants will discover how order, hierarchy, proportion, and geometry bring clarity and meaning to exterior space. Emphasizing plan logic over stylistic trends, the session offers practical tools for organizing site and garden compositions with confidence. Ideal for design professionals and students seeking to strengthen their command of classical spatial structure.
Required Materials:
Bring essential hand drafting tools (such as a scale, pencils, eraser, and straightedge) to complete a site drawing exercise on 11 x 17 inch paper. No advanced drafting experience is required.
Instructors:
Monica Perrone is a sole-practitioner landscape architect with forty years of professional experience across landscape architecture, planning, urban design, and construction. She has practiced in multiple regions of the United States and is known for thoughtful, site-responsive design grounded in proportion, spatial clarity, and buildable solutions. She has taught upper-division design studios in the Landscape Architecture program at the University of California, Davis.
Megan Leicht received her Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Notre Dame and has focused her professional work on traditional and classical architecture in the Bay Area. Her experience has strengthened a commitment to proportion, harmony, and ordered design, with hand drawing as a core part of her process. She currently practices with Kirley Architects in Marin, contributing to classically oriented residential projects.
This course is hosted by an ICAA Chapter. Please check the Chapter website or contact the Chapter directly for the most up-to-date details including dates, times, and pricing.
At the end of the course, participants will be able to:
1) Identify fundamental principles of classical landscape design, including order, hierarchy, proportion, and geometry.
2) Recognize how these principles are expressed in precedent plans and garden compositions.
3) Diagram basic spatial relationships to clarify structure within a site plan.
4) Apply a simple classical ordering strategy to organize a small-scale exterior design exercise.