Landscape Architecture
Craig Barton — Department Chair
Kristina Hill — Director
The Landscape Architecture Program at UVA is committed to teaching design in a way that combines a technical understanding of ecological issues with forms that bring meaning to the contemporary landscape. We engage critical issues that we believe should influence the design of all landscapes, including attention to social justice, the need to renew industrial sites, and urban adaptations to global climate change.
Meet the faculty: video interviews
Meet the students: selected student commentary
If you wish to be a leader in this field, we invite you to join us in our work with urban communities and urban landscapes. Our educational program is demanding, but the exceptional opportunity we offer to learn, question, and develop your own approach to these urgent matters is rewarding as well.
Three recent changes made by our faculty reflect our commitment to leadership in our field: forming a joint Department with Architecture, creating a technical curriculum grounded in current ecological knowledge, and building an international network of collaborators with whom we can test the value of our approaches.
The Joint Department
Our decision to create a joint Department with Architecture is one that challenges the typical boundaries of both professions. It allows us to see design as a pursuit of answers to questions that crosses physical scales, from the interior and skin of a building to the spaces and surfaces of a city and its regional landscape. This partnership fosters collaboration by stressing design rigor and developing a shared language between the disciplines, bringing students and faculty into joint studios that address hybrid concepts of form and place in various international contexts. In addition to this primary partnership, we also rely on collaborations with colleagues in our School’s departments of planning and architectural history to create a rich intellectual and practical environment for our students.
The “Eco–tech” Curriculum
Our second major effort has been to establish an innovative curriculum model that draws on our strengths in theory and history while adding significant new capacity. First and foremost, our curriculum is centered on studio–based design. We support this core pedagogical approach with a combination of intellectually challenging courses in design theory and history, and an innovative new eco–tech curriculum that re–centers our teaching of technology around ecological knowledge. The eco–tech curriculum also links our technical courses directly to our studios, in order to bring current ecological and hydrological knowledge into our students’ design work. Our ambition is to present all of the traditional skills of the profession (grading, drainage, contract documents, plant identification, and so on) through an ecological lens, so that our students can address the critical issues of our time from a position that integrates scientific knowledge and cultural perspectives.
Next year and in coming years, our ongoing efforts to innovate in design education will involve thoughtful experiments that interweave digital and manual modes of representation. Our goal is to connect ideas to images in ways that allow us to explore issues relevant to our time and place, for example, the increasing recognition that dynamic processes such as flows of water, food, fuel and living organisms can be an explicit component of form–giving in built landscapes. We encourage our students to push the capacity of all representation techniques to the point where they generate new ideas about meaning, form, and dynamic change.
Expanding International Collaboration
Our program has made several recent commitments to international collaboration in design education. This is very important in both a global economy and an era of significant global environmental trends. We are likely to see major trends that affect many regions of the world, including investment patterns, water shortages, health threats, and climate change impacts. Students in our program are exposed to the ideas and design work of visitors from China, Mexico, and Europe, among other countries and regions. We offer a travel studio to Mexico City, in order to study the common challenges of globalizing cities. We have also begun a networked collaboration with the Leibniz University in Germany and Peking University in China to share ideas with two of the best landscape architecture programs in the world. With these commitments, our students are guaranteed an opportunity to make sure their knowledge and design ideas are relevant on an international as well as a national scale.
NEWS AND EVENTS
November 3, 2009
"Shaping the American Landscape" Includes Entries by Faculty and Alumni
Shaping the American Landscape - UVa Press
by Elizabeth Meyer A new reference work,"Shaping the American Landscape: New Profiles from the Pioneers of American Landscape Design Project" (University of Virginia Press), includes entries on two beloved figures associated with the early years of the UVa Landscape Architecture program, Professor Benjamin Howland and Lecturer Meade Palmer. This book edited by Charles Birnbaum (UVA Howland Lecturer 1992), Founder and President of The Cultural Landscape Foundation, is an encyclopedia of biographical entries about significant American landscape architects. It follows an earlier encyclopedia of biographies, "Pioneers of American Landscape Design" (2000), edited by Charles Birnbaum and Robin Karson. UVa Landscape Architecture faculty Ethan Carr, Elizabeth Meyer and Reuben Rainey as well as alumna Sue Nelson authored bibliographic essays in "Shaping the American Landscape". The subjects of their research include significant leaders in the National Park Service, Conrad Wirth and Benjamin Howland, modernist designers Lawrence Halprin and Robert Royston, and the Virginia's most-recognized twentieth century landscape architect, Meade Palmer, whose Warrenton-based firm was a training ground for dozens of influential landscape architects from Terence Harkness (Professor, University of Illnois), Hallie Boyce (Principal, Olin Studio) to Warren T. Byrd, Jr. (former UVA Dept Chair and Professor Emeritus).
October 21, 2009
Faculty to be Featured in Sustainable World Symposium
Timeless Design in a Sustainable World
TIMELESS DESIGN IN A SUSTAINABLE WORLD – at the Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden, Richmond Wed and Thurs, October 28-29. This two-day symposium will feature our own Thomas Woltz, ASLA, of Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architecture Firm, Charlottesville, VA as well as Douglas Reed, FASLA, of Reed Hilderbrand Associates, Watertown, MA. AND will showcase the Richmond premiere of Prof. Timothy Beatley’s documentary, The Nature of Cities. The cost for the event is $70 for Wednesday only ($35 for students); $95 for Thursday only ($48 for students); and $130 for both days ($65 for students). The fee includes dinner Wednesday and/or lunch Thursday. Event description: If one legacy of the 20th century is its architectural prowess, might the 21st century be devoted to developing exquisite green spaces between the buildings where we live, work, and play? All around the world, growing urban populations are seeking communal spaces—parks, squares, plazas, piazzas, greenways and gardens—as essential components of daily life, places of respite and reflection, recreation, and celebration. This symposium will examine timeless principles of design—whether applied to the creation of a residential garden or a public space—that connect us to the natural world and in so doing, fulfill man’s innate desire for association with other living things. The symposium honors the legacy of Charles F. Gillette, a leader in the field of landscape architecture, by engaging the public in a conversation about the importance of landscape design and the value of Gillette’s ideals of elegance, superb craftsmanship, and seamless blending of architecture and garden. For the itinerary and online registration visit the symposium's website.
October 16, 2009
Emily Rogers (MLA'09) Quoted in Post Article on Dumbarton Oaks Vegetable Garden
At Dumbarton Oaks, Veggies Crop Up Once More By Adrian Higgins [Washington Post, 10/15/09] The renowned garden at the Dumbarton Oaks estate in Georgetown is celebrated as a work of art, the perfect union of landscape design, craftsmanship and horticulture. I've felt for years, though, that the garden was missing one essential element: a vegetable garden. Happily, that has been fixed. A band of volunteers, with the staff gardeners, are reflecting on their first season of raising salad greens, beans, lettuces, tomatoes, okra and more in one of the garden's most serene spaces, a large terrace anchored by a pair of distinctive clay-tiled pavilions. [for complete article, follow link in headline]
October 7, 2009
2009 Woltz Symposium Held This Week
Woltz Symposium
The University of Virginia School of Architecture will host the 2009 John E. Woltz Memorial Symposium, "Adaptation: Urban Infrastructure and Climate Change," Oct. 8-10 at Campbell Hall. William Hudnut III, senior fellow emeritus at the Urban Land Institute in Washington, D.C. and a former mayor of Indianapolis and of Chevy Chase, Md., will give the keynote address, "What is the Scope of the Infrastructure Challenge that Faces American Cities?," on Oct. 8 at 6 p.m. in Campbell Hall, room 153. The Woltz Symposium was first held in 2001 and has been held periodically "to address interdisciplinary topics related to the city and to foster new visions that explore the interdependence of architecture and landscape architecture," according to the document establishing the fund. The symposia are held in memory of John E. Woltz, a 1947 graduate of U.Va.'s College of Arts & Sciences and a longtime friend of the Architecture School. The goal of the 2009 symposium is to produce a set of essays, cases and visionary ideas that address the potential of adaptive infrastructure to meet the challenges of climate change in cities. A series of discussions initiated by invited panelists will take place on Oct. 9 and 10, and audience members will be encouraged to join panelists on the stage, one or two at a time, to ask questions or offer comments, once the panelists have shared their initial thoughts. Kristina Hill, associate professor and director of the Program in Landscape Architecture, is the symposium's organizer. She has identified several key questions she hopes the panelists and attendees will address during the symposium, including: • Whose health and safety will be most vulnerable in the climate we can expect in 2050 and beyond, and what investments will protect our most vulnerable citizens? • What multi-functional approaches might allow urban regions to make these investments to produce fundamental benefits to quality of life and a robust urban economy? • Are there any insights we can gain from these challenges about what it means to be human in our time? The invited panelists include both national and foreign academics and practitioners in the fields of design, urban history, water conservation and engineering. Among the panelists are: Alex Nickson, City of London ; Piet Dircke, ARCADIS, a leading international engineering and design firm; Martin Prominski, Liebniz University, Germany; Kongjian Yu, Peking University; Anne Sprirn, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Jane Wolff, University of Toronto. Several University of Virginia faculty from the schools of Architecture and Engineering and the College of Arts & Sciences will also contribute. The symposium is free and open to the public.
September 17, 2009
David Malda (MLA/MArch) Named 2009 National Olmsted Scholar
LAF Olmsted Scholar Announcement
The Landscape Architecture Foundation announced that David Malda is the 2009-10 National Olmsted Scholar, an honor bestowed on the student who best exemplifies leadership in sustainable design and planning. Malda is a student in both the Master of Landscape Architecture and Master of Architecture programs who expects to complete them in 2010. Now in its second year, the Olmsted Scholars Program solicits one nomination from every college and university landscape architecture program in the United States from which one National Olmsted Scholar and four finalists are selected. Last year, Karl Krause (MLA’09) was named a finalist in the inaugural program. The UVa Landscape Architecture Program nominated Malda for his outstanding scholarship and his leadership across several platforms – within studio; between disciplines; as a co-editor of the journal, lunch; among graduate students through GALA; and other initiatives inside and outside of the School of Architecture. “The University of Virginia Landscape Architecture faculty are … confident that he will be one of the leaders who re-imagines the forms and spaces of the twenty-first century urban landscape through his writings, built works, and the conversations he initiates with his clients and collaborators,” the faculty noted in their letter of nomination. Malda’s design and research direction reflects his studies across disciplines and the essay he prepared for the Olmsted Scholars Program, “Lessons for a Multi-Disciplinary Practice,” outlines a detailed plan for bringing community to the forefront of public urban landscape design. Malda expects to follow through on this plan. “Over the past few years I have been particularly interested in urban highways as sites of intersection between global and local priorities. After school, I am interested in working on these kinds of infrastructural landscapes both as an architect and landscape architect,” he said. The nominators also identified Malda’s prominent role in highlighting the points of connection between architecture and landscape architecture: “Malda exemplifies the best of our dual design students: he is committed to the ethic and craft of building sustainably, he assumes that form evolves from intersection of social, ecological and tectonic concerns, and he is central to the emerging discourse on the seam between architecture and landscape architecture in our Department,” they said. Malda will receive the award, which includes a $25,000 prize, at the American Society of Landscape Architects’ annual meeting in Chicago this week. Dean Kim Tanzer, who will attend the event along with Associate Professor Elizabeth Meyer among others, noted the School’s pride in Malda’s accomplishments, “We are honored and thrilled that a student in our Landscape Architecture and Architecture graduate programs will receive this national award which reflects on the excellence of our faculty, staff, and programs as well as our strong interest and support for interdisciplinary explorations of sustainable design principles.”
