Case Study and the Gap between Knowledge and Practice in Landscape Architecture; A Review on LAF's Experience

The "gap between knowledge and practice" is a known challenge. Especially in fields like Landscape Architecture and urbanism which are closely related to profession, this challenge has high priority. This gap has two main reasons in third world countries. First reason is about the production of knowledge which is unrelated to the needs of the country. Second reason is about the weakness in applying produced knowledge for practice.
In developed countries, this challenge is somewhat brought under control. In landscape architecture profession, LAF is one of the most known foundations which have programs to face this challenge. Although today we know that using an exact same program as a copy for a country like Iran is not necessarily useful, but as a part of a solution, theirs experience and program must be studied. So the main question of this paper is "what is the main program of LAF to bridge the gap between knowledge and practice? What is the role of "case study" on this program? In what areas, "case study" is useful?
Findings show that "case study" is the main core of LAF’s "research" programs. This main core beside "scholarship" and "Leadership" programs of LAF produced six beneficial areas. These six areas are "Teaching", "Research", "Practice", "Theory building", "Criticism", "Communication and Outreach". This paper summarizes definition, benefits, limitations and a method for landscape case study which is proposed by Mark Francis for LAF.