Master of Landscape Architecture

Graduates of the program work in numerous capacities: as environmental stewards and as guardians of our cultural landscape heritage; as avant-garde designers whose forms and spaces express the fundamental issues of our times; as planners and managers whose design perspective qualifies them to evaluate and create environmental policies; as private practitioners who imaginatively interpret and resolve design problems; and as educators who continue to explore and teach in colleges and universities throughout the world.The Master’s in Landscape Architecture program is designed to serve three groups of people. The first group of students are those who have discovered an interest in landscape architecture after earning a (non-design) college degree. These people take a year of preparatory courses and then take an additional 48 credits toward their master's degree, which is typically granted within a three year period.The second group of students are those who have earned a degree in a related field. These students may enter into the second year (if they qualify), but they often need to take several of the core requirements of the first year preparatory curriculum. These students usually take such required courses in lieu of the elective courses of the second and third year curricula. At the discretion of the admission committee, students with degrees in Architecture or Environmental Design may qualify for this track.The third group of students are those with an undergraduate degree in landscape architecture from a Landscape Architectural Accreditation Board (LAAB) accredited program. These students enter the master's program to expand their knowledge in a special area of interest over a two-year period, and often work with a particular faculty member on a research project.Students from a great diversity of cultural and educational backgrounds enrich the program with broad-ranging perspectives which are brought to bear on common planning and design problems. In a studio-based curriculum, students experience expert guidance while engaging real landscape problems ranging across all scales and types, including greenways, gardens, housing and open spaces, parks, and institutional and recreational landscapes. Through a series of lecture and discussion classes, labs, workshops, and individual research projects students gain the scholarly context necessary for the applied problem-solving of the studios.