MILTON LANDLAB

Milton LandLab is a collaboration between the School of Architecture's Landscape Architecture faculty and students with support from the FABLAB. It provides a unique opportunity for students to study and propose methodologies and practices for design research based in landscape mediums.

ABOUT THE LANDLAB

Milton LandLab is based at the 172-acre Milton Airfield, located about eight miles east of Campbell Hall, and a formerly operating airport owned by the University of Virginia. As a historically disturbed site (from its use as a WWII airstrip to its present utilization by the Rivanna Radio Control Club's model airplane runway), with frontage along the Rivanna River, forested in parts, meadowed in others, Milton Airfield provides a site for extended study, large-scale intervention, and intimate engagement with landscape media. As a University asset, Milton Airfield is a shared space for learning and experimentation — it offers a unique place for the UVA School of Architecture's students and faculty to engage in innovative research and teaching in landscape design — a place and facility to experiment with landscape forms and processes rigorously on-site and over time.

Driven by the need to work at very large scales, with time, and out in the landscape, Milton LandLab is a place where students, working collaboratively with each other and with faculty, can benefit from one-to-one engagement with materials, plant forms, time, tools, and processes of design, installation and maintenance. Defined as a space for experimentation, observation, practice, disturbance and site maintenance, Milton LandLab enriches design education and the field of landscape architecture through its innovative and forward-oriented approach — focused on questions about aesthetics, performance, phenology, vegetation, hydrology, wildlife and more, related to landscape design and research.

Milton LandLab Website

PROJECTS AT MILTON LANDLAB:

FA20: INDEPENDENT STUDY

Fall 2020 projects at Milton LandLab were conducted out of an independent study and were designed and executed entirely by students: Hannah Brown (MLA, '22) Reid Farnsworth (MLA, '21) Rebecca Hinch (MLA, '21) Lizzie Needham (MLA, '21) Theodore Teichman (MLA, '22)

Milton Airfield_1 — The Fall2020 Milton LandLab team consists of MLA students Hannah Brown, Reid Farnsworth, Rebecca Hinch, Lizzie Needham, and Theodore Teichman

Milton_Crimping_1 — Experimental Plots are a series of articulated spaces at Milton LandLab that are in-situ explorations of spatial experiences driven by alternations to living, landscape mediums. Crimping, a no-till method of mulch making allowed the collaborative team to create paths through an early successional meadow using boards, ropes, and their bodies © Theodore Teichman

Milton_Materials_1 — Curious Patterning as Synthetic Field Practice is an investigation of textile landscapes © Theodore Teichman

Milton_Site_1 — Edges of Succession examines edge typologies at Milton LandLab © Lizzie Needham

Faculty Advisors —
Bradley Cantrell, Professor and Landscape Architecture Department Chair 
Brian Davis, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture 
Michael Luegering, Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture

Learn more about Fa20 Milton LandLab's work and process

SP21: ALAR 8020 — MILTON LANDLAB RESEARCH STUDIO 

In spring 2021, Assistant Professor Matthew Seibert (with SIA Theodore Teichman, MLA '22) is teaching an advanced research studio — A Mesocosm for Ways of Knowing through Situated Making. This Milton LandLab studio argues that world-building occurs through knowing and making, intimately situated within a specific landscape over extended time. The studio proposes the close examination of Milton Airfield, a 172 acre site of scalar significance, through student-led design research at 1:1 scale. Understood as a mesocosm, Milton provides a site for students to meaningfully engage with the dynamic media of landscape: earth, vegetation, hydrology, light, microclimate, wildlife, and socio-cultural sense of place.

Milton_LL_3 — Arduino testing on site; Class discussion with the Center for Urban Habitats © Milton LandLab

Milton_Contour — Riverbank Contour © Xinyu Wang

Milton_LL_2 — Photograph series showing the inversion of positive and negatives spaces due to the different levels of light exposure © Xiaoxuan Ren; (R): Milton's edge conditions through "noise" - modifications of the camera settings, used to see beyond the usual idealized, human-eye vision © Rebecca Hinch

Milton LL_1 — (L): The Influence of Landscape Infrastructure © Xinyu Wang; (R): The Sounds of Milton © Jacob Blankenship

Milton_Soil Portraits Diagram — Soil Portrait Device ©Lizzie Needham

LEARN MORE ABOUT SP21 MILTON LANDLAB'S RESEARCH STUDIO WORK AND PROCESS

The Landscape Architecture Department at UVA develops 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.