UVA in Berlin Program Overview
Summer 2027
Program Dates — To be announced
Application Deadline: February 15, 2027
Learn More and Apply
Upcoming Information Sessions
— ISO Virtual Study Abroad Information Session (Includes Berlin Program)
Monday November 30, 5 - 7pm
Zoom (Link to be Shared Soon)
RESILIENT BERLIN: LANDSCAPE AS CIVIC ART
In this three-week summer course in Berlin, students will conduct immersive fieldwork on resilient landscapes of high social and aesthetic quality. Berlin is an exemplary location for site-based research because of the broad range of its designed public landscapes, which include not only parks but also bioreserves, reclaimed industrial sites, and landscape-based infrastructure. Their creation spans and reflects the city’s fractured history, and they exhibit an array of design strategies that are forward thinking in their responses to the social and ecological challenges.
Students will conduct guided fieldwork exercises to document and interpret these strategies, both for their individual education and as contributions toward an exhibition in Campbell Hall the following fall semester.
Throughout the course, students will create notebooks with sketches, analytic drawings, and notational diagrams. This visual information will be supplemented with photographs. The exhibition will synthesize these materials under the guidance of the instructors and a Student Research Assistant hired to mount the exhibition. The exhibition design will reflect the visualization skills used throughout the design studios and fabrication lab in the School of Architecture.
LOCATIONS
Students in Berlin are exposed to a vibrant and cosmopolitan environment, which offers a unique depiction of recent history, as the metropolis is still in the midst of reinventing itself after the long divide between East and West. The city holds keys to understanding Germany and the Germans, but also provides broader clues to understanding Europe, its long and difficult quest for common ground, and the persistent difficulties on its way. Additionally, students enjoy, overall, a lower cost of living than most other larger European cities.
There will be day trips to Postdam (about 45 minutes by S-Bahn) and Dessau (approximately 90 minutes by train).
LEARN MORE —
Program dates, Program details, Planning Information, Program Costs, Financial Aid Information and Application Details can be found at UVA's Education Abroad Website.
Please note: School of Architecture students are encouraged to apply for dedicated financial aid for this program. This is a Walker Global Experience Scholarship Program - supported by a generous $2 million gift. Students may apply for an award of up $5,000 to cover expenses such as program tuition fees, room and board, transportation and incidental costs.
SARC XXXX: Resilient Berlin: Landscape as Civic Art (3 credits)
This course focuses on the concept of field work, with the field being the subject for observation, measurement, representation, and testing. The field, among other constructs, is the volume of the streetscape, the internal spaces of the art gallery, the emergent vegetation occupying liminal spaces, and/or the complexities of the city block. There is an intentional exploration of the field as a space, rather than focusing on the objects that occupy the field, as well as unpacking a thickness that is physical, social, and cultural. Complementing this framing is the idea that the field is dynamic, and methods must also engage this temporal dimension.
The exercises purposely investigate how information is captured through drawing, photography, video, and spatial data to build rich representations of complex urban relationships. Students will engage in methods to develop notational drawings for temporal representation, spatial data capture with smart phones, as well as surveying of specific site/urban features in the field. The work will then be translated into representations to engage in specific research objectives and/or design outcomes.
Michael Lee | mgl4v@virginia.edu
Michael Lee is a landscape theorist and historian whose research focuses on ideological constructions of nature at the intersection of philosophy, literature, and landscape design. He has a special interest in European garden history (particularly in 18th–20th-century Germany) and has lectured around the country and in Germany on the subject. He is an Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture. His latest projects include a study of landscape infrastructure in the design work of Peter Joseph Lenné (1789–1866) and an analysis of landscape and gender in Weimar modernism.
Bradley Cantrell | bcantrell@virginia.edu
Professor of Landscape Architecture Bradley Cantrell is a landscape architect and scholar known for his contributions to the integration of computation, responsive technologies, and ecological infrastructures in the design of the territory. Cantrell’s work bridges the gap between traditional landscape practices and nascent technologies that are transforming the field. He is the co-author of the publications, “Digital Drawing for Landscape Architecture,” a seminal text that has become a cornerstone in the education of landscape architects and “Responsive Landscapes,” that delves into the potentials of interactive systems and adaptive design.
Abbey Stockstill | nke4wy@virginia.edu
Abbey Stockstill is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Architectural History. Stockstill's research investigates the intersection of architecture, landscape, urbanism and identity in the medieval Mediterranean, particularly in the region of the Islamic West known as the Maghrib, comprising present-day Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. She is the author of Marrakesh and the Mountains: Landscape, Urban Planning, and Identity in the Medieval Maghrib, which was published as part of the prestigious “Buildings, Landscapes, and Societies” series with Pennsylvania State University Press in 2024. In it, she traces the emergence of Marrakesh as an Afro-Mediterranean urban center, exploring the dynamic interactions among the city’s monuments and its landscape during a period of significant transformation.