A project by University of Virginia landscape architecture student Yu Cheng.
Editor’s note: This listing was updated on November 1, 2022.
OVERVIEW
At the University of Virginia, Master’s students in the Landscape Architecture program learn from among the most accomplished professionals in the field; its instructors have included Nelson Byrd Woltz’s Warren Byrd, professor emerita Julie Bargmann and 2022 visiting professor Kate Orff – practitioners who are renowned for remediating post-industrial sites around the world and transforming them back into the thriving landscapes they once were.
Demonstrating a commitment to preservation, the program challenges students to imagine new landscape systems in this same spirit. It stresses landscape’s role in transforming the broader constructed environment by emphasizing deep linkages between site and systems, form and processes, practices and values. It consistently engages with the contexts and communities being studied, thereby providing students access to an extensive global network before they have even left school.
The curriculum is built around working in a design studio that foregrounds rigorous research practices and on-site experience, while two labs – the Milton LandLab and the Natural Infrastructure Lab – provide more in-depth immersion into specialized areas. A historically disturbed site and former WWII airstrip, the Milton LandLab is a unique space dedicated to experimentation and exploring new methodologies; the Natural Infrastructure Lab boasts the added bonus of partnering with governmental, non–profit and private entities to focus on myriad projects.
Notable alumni
Warren Byrd and Thomas Woltz (Nelson Byrd Woltz), Elizabeth K. Meyer (UVa Center for Cultural Landscapes), Michael Vergason
Notable faculty
Kate Orff (SCAPE) Elizabeth Meyer, Bradley Cantrell, Julie Bargmann (D.I.R.T. Studio), Brian Davis
