Master of Landscape Architecture Degree Program

The M.L.A. program is structured to educate students to plan and design sustainable places that embody beauty, protect the environment, and enhance people’s lives. Landscape architects work across environmental scales, from the intimate garden to community and urban design to landscape and greenway planning, and must be educated in the visual arts and the physical and natural sciences. The curriculum is designed to provide students with the essential knowledge and skills necessary to become leaders in the landscape architecture profession.

The program is centered on the design studios, through which students are exposed to a wide range of scales and project types that integrate information from other classes and provide opportunities for interdisciplinary study. Many studio projects are community-based, working with real clients in the private and public sectors.

Curriculum
The Master’s Degree in Landscape Architecture is a three-year first professional degree program accredited by the Landscape Architecture Accreditation Board. Three groups of people are potential candidates.

1. No design background—For those who have discovered an interest in landscape architecture after earning a college degree in another field, the department offers a three-year program that includes a year of preparatory courses and then two years to earn the 48 graduate credits required for the degree.

2. Design backgound in related field—For those who have an architecture or related design degree, the department offers acceptance into the second year of the program, although there may be a need to take a few of the first-year core requirements.

3. Bachelor’s in landscape architecture—These students enter the second year of the program and have the flexibility to expand their knowledge in a special area of individual concentration.

Core Requirements
The core requirements provide students with the knowledge they will apply in design studios and include:

1. landscape architectural history and theory

2. visual communication using both hand and digital techniques

3. plants

4. natural and cultural systems

5. site engineering (grading and stormwater management) and construction materials and methods

6. professional practice.

Design studios incorporate this knowledge into specific projects and introduce students to design theories, methodologies and processes, and landscape planning principles and approaches. The emphasis is on creative thinking and problem solving in the project’s physical and cultual context.

Concentrations
Students are encouraged to take several courses within an area of concentration related to landscape architecture, both inside and outside the department. The following four areas of concentration are based on faculty research and professional expertise:

1. Ecological Landscape Planning and Design. This concentration engages ecological pattern and its associated processes across a range of spatial scales. It addresses current environmental and ecological issues such as green infrastructure, greenway planning, water resource planning, biodiversity, and brownfields.

2. Design and Management of Cultural Landscapes. This concentration engages the history and theory of the built environment and its role in contemporary design. It addresses current issues in landscape preservation and design such as varying treatments of cultural landscapes, and ecological and cultural revelatory design philosophies.

3. Urban Planning, Policy and Design. This concentration engages the economic, social, and cultural aspects of the urban experience. It addresses the roles of policy makers, planners, designers, and citizens in shaping the urban fabric in small to medium-sized cities.

4. Applications of Information Technology to Planning and Design. This concentration engages the ways in which the planning and design professions are being transformed by information technology. It addresses the integration of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Computer Aided Design (CAD), and multimedia into the design process.