Landscape Architecture M.L.A.

The Master of Landscape Architecture (MLA) is a first-professional degree for students who wish to become licensed landscape architects. The MLA program is an interdisciplinary three-year degree accredited by the Landscape Architecture Accreditation Board (LAAB). The curriculum introduces students to the practice and discipline of landscape architecture, providing them with the knowledge, methods, and skills required to practice as landscape architects. Our MLA program prepares students to analyze the complex challenges facing urban, suburban, and rural communities and to envision sustainable designs at multiple scales across human and ecological systems. These challenges include water scarcity and water quality, climate change, species extinction, riverine flooding, and environmental injustice. Students address these challenges through planning and designing interventions that create resilient landscapes that manage increasingly scarce social and natural resources. Our urban location and proximity to the Mississippi River and Great Lakes region enables students to explore landscape change across a wide range of physical and political jurisdictions and to learn from the work of local experts to shift environmental, economic, planning, and development policies and practices to create more just, healthy, and sustainable communities.

Landscape architecture is rooted in ethical notions of “good” and “right” and landscape architects are legally bound to serve “the public good.” Throughout our coursework, students consider the often conflicting values that underlie the built environment. For instance, in Landscape History, we ask how places are shaped and reshaped over time in response to cultural, political, environmental, and economic shifts and why certain landscapes are considered historically significant. In research methods, we ask whose knowledge counts when it comes to land use decision-making. In planting design and ecology courses, we ask what is “natural” or “native” and do we mean by “restoration.” The core of the MLA includes six design studios that are supported by courses in construction technologies and materials, planting and ecology, media and representation (including geographic information systems), history, and research methods. The studio sequence begins with small-scale local sites where intensive field investigations are critical to the design process. Second- and third-year option studios travel outside the state to investigate issues like climate change and sea-level rise, remediation of polluted sites, and restoration of ecological function. The program culminates in the capstone studio where students develop and research projects on the topic of their choosing.

MLA students are encouraged to explore graduate minors or dual degrees. Applicants with accredited professional baccalaureate degrees in landscape architecture or architecture will be considered for advanced standing.