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The Department The Profession of Landscape Architecture Landscape architecture is an environmental profession and discipline of broad scope concerned with the design, planning, and management of landscapes. Landscape architecture is founded on an awareness of our deep connections to the natural world and the recognition that we are part of the web of life. A healthy society rests on a commitment to landscape design that respects the land, its processes, its integrity --- and that helps fulfill human potential. Both a science and an art, landscape architecture is based on a scientific knowledge of natural processes coupled with an awareness of historical, cultural, and social dynamics. These are applied to making richly supportive places beautiful in their response to human needs and ecological context. The Department of Landscape Architecture is built on the 19th-century legacy that landscape architecture is both a design and a social profession with responsibilities to ourselves, society, the past, and the future. The program combines professional understanding and skills with a liberal-arts education. As a profession, landscape architecture includes ecologically based planning activities and the analysis of environmental impacts as well as the detailed development of land and sites. As an academic discipline, it provides an opportunity for personal development through environmental problem solving and project-oriented study. |