Return to: Graduate School of Architecture: Degree Programs
Mission
The field of Landscape Architecture is rapidly evolving to address and redress contemporary environmental and societal issues. The next generation of practitioners, scholars, and educators are facing important problems and challenges. Landscape Architecture at UVA strives to educate and inspire the next generation of landscape architecture leaders. As a department, we develop innovative ideas, critical perspectives, synthetic frameworks, and new techniques to address landscape problems through design across a broad range of contexts and scales, from the garden to the region. In this design approach, we emphasize issues of ecology, social and environmental health, technology, and cultural expression. Drawing on the skills, expertise, and varied perspectives of internationally recognized academics and practitioners– the Landscape Architecture Faculty– we promote a broad perspective on socio-ecological contexts, innovation and tradition, inter-species articulation, cultural and artistic expression, ecological health, and the challenges of living in a rapidly changing environment.
–We construe the design of the environment as a critical expression of what it means to be human in our time. In the 21st century, it is necessary to re-define the role of humanity as a co-creator of the environment, collaborating with other and diverse communities, considering multiple species, and curating novel landscape relationships.
–We explore landscape’s role in enriching our world by emphasizing deep linkages between sites and systems, form and process, practices, and values. Through teaching, research, and practice our department positions landscape-making as a primary means to build a more common ground.
–We are committed to preparing our graduates to be critical thinkers who will lead the next generation of design leaders in practice and academia. Methodologically, students are challenged to imagine new landscape systems through rigorous research, design speculation, and the deployment of nascent technologies while remaining grounded in the discipline’s professional practices and methods of material construction.
–We challenge students to envision landscapes that simultaneously contribute to public life and embody an ethic towards the bio-physical world. Our design studios confront the most pressing environmental and social issues of our day – social justice for marginalized communities, renewal strategies for shrinking post-industrial cities, and urban adaptation to global climate change.
From the time students enter their studies, they are encouraged to shape their own individual educational trajectories by integrating their design or non-design undergraduate backgrounds, intellectual interests, and skills into their studies in landscape architecture. We aim to cultivate the passions and individual insights of students while preparing them with the conceptual and technical tools to work across disciplinary boundaries, with human and non-human communities, to help make a more inclusive and resilient world.
Our students come from a wide variety of academic backgrounds, both with and without prior studies in landscape architecture. Applicants are required to submit an application that includes a series of essays and a digital portfolio of their creative work. The work in the portfolio can range widely from personal design explorations to professional work to creative work produced in art or design classes. Prior to enrollment, students are encouraged to become familiar with the discipline through work experience along with reading and/or coursework in the history of landscape architecture, representation, and ecology. For more information, go to UVa School of Architecture Office of Admissions.
For additional information please visit www.virginia.edu/arch.
Our curriculum is a structured series of semesters that build incrementally from a core base of knowledge and skills laid out in the first year. While the first year is fully prescribed in its course requirements, later semesters leave elective options that allow students to pursue their own individual interests that can lead to a final independent design research studio or thesis.
DESIGN STUDIOS The core of each semester is the design studio (6 credit hours), where students are introduced to fundamental design methodologies and are asked to pursue and develop their own research. The studio sequence exposes students to the range of scales and topical issues in landscape architecture. In emphasizing the ability to read and interpret a site within its context and shape its future based on those findings, the initial studios are based locally and emphasize on-site experience and documentation of place. Studios in the second and third years offer students opportunities to participate in interdisciplinary studios in cities and locations around the country and abroad. These advanced studios are research-based, which encourages students to investigate the broader issues beyond a specific design problem and arrive at innovative and bold proposals.
In the final semester of paths, students have the option to take the research studios where they develop an individual line of inquiry or elect to undertake an independent research ‘Thesis’ studio. Both a design research methods class, as well as a design research seminar, must be taken in advance to develop a theoretical basis for independent research.
Supporting the design studios, we have developed three tracks of curricula in related technical and theoretical content:
ECO-TECH Our Eco-Tech or “ecology and technology” sequence integrates the content of plants, landform, water systems, bio-engineering, and regenerative technologies, all focused on innovation through living systems.
MEDIA and Computation The Media and Computation track presents a broad range of design tools from hand drawing and modeling to digital drawing, simulation, and fabrication
HISTORY AND Theory, the History and Theories sequence establishes the conceptual underpinnings of ancient to contemporary precedents, challenging students to put their work into an evolving body of critical thinking and knowledge. These three tracks in the curriculum are integrated with projects carried out in studios.
Our curriculum also offers a series of LAR Advanced courses from which students choose to allow for further concentration in one of the three tracks. Finally, students have a range of open electives that can be taken in the department, school-wide, and across the university to explore special topics in landscape architecture and issues in the related disciplines.
Courses taken previously at other institutions are normally not accepted as substitutions for required courses in any of the paths. Under exceptional circumstances, a petition along with supporting materials (i.e. syllabus and work samples) may be submitted to receive an exemption from taking a required course. Candidates are required to fulfill the total degree credit requirement regardless of course exemptions granted. Petitions are to be submitted to the department chair or graduate program director for consideration and final decision.
The Master of Landscape Architecture (M.L.A.) program is accredited by the National Landscape Architecture Accreditation Board. The program received its last six-year term of accreditation in the Fall of 2023. Our next reaccreditation is scheduled for fall 2029.
