Landscape Architecture (LA)

LA 1410 - Grounding in Landscape Architecture I (4 Credits)  
Introduction to the representation and design of landscapes and to working in a studio setting. Uses freehand drawing, measured drawing, digital tools and model making to understand design principles of the landscape within a cultural and ecological paradigm. This course receives more credit than typical for the meeting pattern due to substantial work outside of instructional hours.
Course Fee: Course Fee, $300. For required package of drafting equipment, plus materials for projects. Fee amount approximate.  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-SBY)
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Develop facility with graphic drawing and representation in plan, section, elevation, electronically and in analog formats.
  • Create perspective, plan and isometric drawings at elementary to intermediate levels of skill.
  • Demonstrate use of analytical representation using two and three-dimensional formats.
  • Design in response to social/ecological programs presented at an introductory level.
  • Integrate skills though a series of design and graphic assignments.
  
LA 1420 - Grounding in Landscape Architecture II (4 Credits)  
This course applies fundamentals of landscape design to small-scale site-planning projects. Work in the studio introduces students to the design process, design principles, construction materials, and a wide array of graphic representation. Projects are selected at a variety of scales to expose students to a broad overview of landscape architecture.
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: first-year Landscape Architecture majors or permission of instructor.  
Course Fee: Course Fee, $250. For required project supplies for model-making, and general drawing/drafting. Fee amount approximate.  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-SBY)
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2022  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students shall develop their facility with analog and digital drawing and representation including plan, section, and elevation.
  • Students shall be introduced to perspective, plan, and isometric drawing.
  • Students shall be introduced to analytical representation using two and three-dimensional formats.
  • Students shall be introduced to Landscape Architecture through spatial and material analysis.
  • Students shall be evaluated based on a series of design and graphic assignments.
  
LA 2010 - Medium of the Landscape I (5 Credits)  
Studio course emphasizing the design process and principles involved in organizing and giving form to outdoor space to create site-specific design.
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: Landscape Architecture majors.  
Course Fee: Course Fee, $250. For required drafting equipment, supplies. Fee amount approximate.  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-CEL, CU-SBY)
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will become familiar with and gain confidence in the design process as a method for solving site design problems.
  • Students will be able to create conceptual designs through site inventory and analysis, program generation and conceptual diagrams.
  • Students will develop graphic and computer skills to clearly communicate their design intent.
  • Students will be able to refine concepts into spatially defined, well-formed schematic designs.
  
LA 2020 - Medium of the Landscape II (5 Credits)  
Focuses on the role of materials and natural systems in design at multiple scales. Design strategies, theory and vocabulary in landscape architecture and allied disciplines are explored within the projects.
Course Fee: Course Fee, $250. For supplies and fees. Fee amount approximate.  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-CEL, CU-SBY)
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2022  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Demonstrate intermediate skill in analog freehand and measured drawing and modeling.
  • Deploy Adobe Suites, CAD, and basic 3D modeling in Rhino or SketchUp at beginning to intermediate levels.
  • Use basic GIS skills to create inventory and analysis maps.
  • Design with increasingly complex programs through meetings and charettes with real clients and/or community engagement.
  
LA 2620 - Laboratory in Landscape Archaeology (3 Credits)  
Crosslisted with ARKEO 2620  
Various American Indian civilizations and European cultures have altered the landscape to meet the needs of their cultures. Students learn how to interpret the Euro-American landscapes of a buried village excavated by Cornell students. The students will identify and date artifacts, stud soil samples, and create site maps.
Distribution Requirements: (CA-AG, HA-AG)  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-CEL)
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2022, Fall 2018, Fall 2017, Fall 2016  
LA 2910 - Landscape Design History II (3 Credits)  
This is an introductory survey of the history and theory of landscape design, broadly defined to include diverse forms of planned human interventions in built and natural environments. We will consider a wide range of planned human interventions in both formal and informal landscapes of the past, including but not limited to aesthetic, functional, and ecological outcomes. Our primary focus will be on landscape design and planning developments from the 17th to late 20th century, placing North American sites and trends in relation to a hemispheric and global context of social, cultural, economic, political, and scientific forces. Critical concepts, sites, and conditions across time, space, and scale are explored through weekly topical lectures, creative exercises, discussions, readings, and essays.
Distribution Requirements: (HA-AG, LA-AG)  
LA 3010 - Integrating Theory and Practice I (5 Credits)  
This studio engages students in a design process on complex sites and spaces that interact with both human and natural systems, and critically explores theories of landscape architecture and representation through projects that derive form from a specific site and place. Students will work with processes of landscape change and how to design with and represent change. This course reinforces the fundamentals of theory as related to site-specific design processes.
Prerequisites: LA 2020 with grade of C or better.  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-CEL, CU-SBY)
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Identify, analyze, and evaluate on-site and adjacent systems (both natural and anthropogenic) and their interactions.
  • Address complex landscape situations through the specificity of Landscape Architecture to propose sustainable future scenarios for landscapes in a process of change and/or abandonment.
  • Apply multi-layered site analysis skills and take a critical stance on the assemblage of data.
  • Conduct complex analysis of a site and systems using a concrete, process-based and material design approach at multiple scales develop conceptual designs and methods that inform more refined site plans and fit to the ecologies of a site and context.
  • Gain familiarity and confidence with the design scale, including developing skills in landform manipulation through scaled drawing and/or precise and dynamic models.
  • Expand graphic and computer skills to clearly develop and communicate strategies, design ideas, spatial qualities, and management requirements for landscape design over time.
  
LA 3020 - Integrating Theory and Practice II (5 Credits)  
This studio builds upon prior course work with an expectation that participants can creatively manipulate the program and conditions of a site or area, with increased emphasis on contemporary technology. The course focuses on the expression of design solutions that grow from and affirm an explicit sense of site and place. Social, cultural, physical, and historical factors and their relationship to site design and planning are critically explored through theory and practice.
Course Fee: Course Fee, $250. For supplies and international studios: $500. Fee amount approximate.  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-CEL, CU-SBY)
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2022  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will become familiar with and gain confidence in the design process as a method for solving site planning problems.
  • Students will gain the ability to identify, analyze, and evaluate on-site and adjacent systems and their interactions.
  • Students will be able to develop conceptual designs through three-dimensional models.
  • Students will be able to expand conceptual design models into spatially defined and refined site plans.
  • Students will develop representation skills to clearly communicate design intent.
  
LA 3160 - Site Engineering (5 Credits)  
This course exposes students to the fundamentals of site engineering and its relationship to best environmental practices. Lectures and short vignettes are provided to students and worked-through within the class period. These projects deal with site grading, earthwork estimating; storm water management, site layout, and essential associated professional skills. This course receives more credit than typical for the meeting pattern due to substantial academic activity outside of instructional hours.
Enrollment Information: Primarily for: Landscape Architecture majors.  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-SBY)
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Identify landforms and understand the three-dimensional qualities of landscape and how those qualities directly affect the designs that you create.
  • Understand the correct terminology, concepts and conventions used by Engineers, Landscape Architects and Contractors to achieve the desired built outcomes.
  • Prepare basic site grading plans to enhance their designs.
  • Complete calculations related to soil estimation and storm-water management.
  • Layout a landscape design on site.
  
LA 3180 - Site Assembly (5 Credits)  
This course intends to establish a solid base of technical knowledge about the physical and performative characteristics of traditional building materials and emerging alternatives realted to landscape architecture. In addition, the course encourages students to become astute observers and skilled recorders at the detail to landscape scales, while obtaining a greater materials sensibility to the design and construction processes that eventually translate into built landscapes. This includes the investigation of phenomenal elements and natural processes that take part in the integral relationships established between site assemblies and design intent or material expression. During the course of the semester students will be asked to challenge definitions of material convention, invention, and intervention; through lectures, workshops, discussions, and field trips. Students will examine materials and methods of landscape construction; frameworks for material selection and application; and representations for detail prototyping and construction documentation.
Exploratory Studies: (CU-SBY)
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2022  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will advance research and design methodologies related to material systems and technologies for the built environment.
  • Students will recognize social, economic, and environmental climates of material systems and technologies in landscape architecture; and understand the design opportunities and challenges afforded from past, current, future applications.
  • Students will sharpen observational and technical knowledge of material systems and technologies; and understand the fundamental relationship of siting design and materials with the climatic conditions that might impact their performance.
  • Students will cultivate a sustainable, ethical, and environmentally sensitive design practice and ethos.
  
LA 3430 - Rural Adaptation (3 Credits)  
This research seminar will invert the figure/ground relationship of city and hinterlands, focusing on the rural territory as an ecological, social, cultural and spatial entity with its own attendant operations, and, in the context of changing climates, specific risks and opportunities. The Finger Lakes Region, its industries, economies, and ecologies will be the locus of our attention. Throughout the semester, each student will research a specific operational landscape, which will be collectively compiled into a Rural Atlas of the Finger Lakes Region. The atlas will unpack the cultural, geographic and regulatory contexts that shape each particular type of rural landscape, the specific risks and changes projected for the region, as well as speculative tools, management methods and assemblages that might help these communities adapt.
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will interpret and synthesize multiple sources (including lectures, readings, and spatial data) to explore the environmental, economic, social, and political forces that have shaped and continue to shape rural regions, with specific attention to the Finger Lakes.
  • Students will apply design research methods to construct analytical drawings, diagrams and maps of the processes, policies and procedures that create specific rural landscapes.
  • Students will construct a timeline of rural landscape change in the Finger Lakes Region from pre-colonial times to present, synthesizing information from lectures, readings, and additional sources.
  • Students will demonstrate proficiency in ArcGIS software and methods for compiling and analyzing spatial data.
  • Students will evaluate the current and projected impacts of climate change on the Finger Lakes Region, using primary sources and current projection models.
  • Students will demonstrate responsible scholarship through properly citing sources (text, image, and datasets), and adhering to the highest academic standards through the construction of an Atlas bibliography.
  • Students will construct an atlas entry on a specific operational landscape, combining both written and visual analysis, working iteratively through multiple drafts.
  • Students will work collaboratively to produce a class-wide Rural Atlas of the Finger Lakes using shared drawing criteria.
  
LA 4010 - Urban Design Studio (5 Credits)  
This studio focuses on the integration of theory and practice in landscape architecture at the urban scale. Urban design methods, morphology, and strategies are introduced and design and planning concepts applied to city-scaled projects including community engagement. Students are engaged in contemporary urban design strategies and methodologies on real-life projects in a metropolitan area.
Course Fee: Course Fee, $250. For supplies. Fee amount approximate.  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-CEL, CU-SBY)
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will become familiar with and gain confidence in the design process as a method for solving site planning problems.
  • Students will gain the ability to identify, analyze, and evaluate on-site and adjacent systems (both natural and man-made) and their interactions.
  • Students will be able to develop conceptual designs through three-dimensional models and quick sketches.
  • Students will be able to expand conceptual design models into spatially defined and refined site plans.
  • Students will develop graphic and computer skills to clearly communicate design intent.
  
LA 4020 - Capstone Community Design Studio (5 Credits)  
Community and ecological infrastructure design studio.
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: Landscape Architecture seniors, graduate students and students in other fields with permission of instructor.  
Course Fee: Course Fee, $250. For supplies. Fee amount approximate.  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-CEL, CU-SBY)
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2022  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will learn spatial design strategies for the interaction between human and ecological systems.
  • Students will develop landscape designs across scales from the region to the detail.
  • Students will work to understand the needs and desires of local stakeholders, such as community members, business people, and regulatory agency representatives, and interpret these for their significance on future design work.
  • Students will work across a range of representational modes including three dimensional digital modeling to develop relative certainty in the functional and aesthetic aspects of their proposal.
  
LA 4030 - Directed Study: The Concentration (1 Credit)  
Working with their advisor, students create a written and visual document that describes the concentration intent.
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: Landscape Architecture undergraduates in final year of study.  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Create a unifying theme around the elective coursework chosen as part of your landscape architecture degree program.
  • Create an explanatory narrative that highlights your interests that are tangential to the field of landscape architecture.
  • Identify how these courses will aid you in your future education or career goals.
  
LA 4050 - Designing Archaeological Exhibits (3 Credits)  
Crosslisted with ARKEO 4020  
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2022, Fall 2021, Fall 2020, Fall 2019  
LA 4100 - Computer Applications in Landscape Architecture (3 Credits)  
Designed to develop a working knowledge of AutoCAD as a tool for design and construction documentation. Explores the link between AutoCAD, Adobe Create Suite and Microsoft Office softwares.
Enrollment Information: Primarily for: Landscape Architecture majors, all others must get permission of instructor.  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2022  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will have a working knowledge of 2D CAD.
  • Students will understand how CAD is implemented in landscape architecture.
  • Students will have upon completion a list of over 100 AutoCAD commands as reference.
  
LA 4120 - Professional Practice (2 Credits)  
This course presents the student with an understanding of the emerging role of the professional landscape architect. The course helps students choose a type of practice and introduces the problems and opportunities one may encounter in an office or in other professional situations. Topics include the diversity of types of professional practice, marketing professional services, office and project management, construction administration, and ethics.
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2022  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Define the types of industry work available to landscape architects (public, private, non-profit, and academic) and meet current practitioners through guest lectures.
  • Describe the required skills in a landscape architecture firm (project management, construction documentation, construction administration, etc.).
  • Summarize the legal responsibilities of landscape architects to public health, safety, and welfare (the law as it applies to landscape architects).
  • Discuss political, ethical, and social implications of working as a landscape architect.
  • Describe the professional licensure process and its implications (LARE, state licensure and professional organizations).
  • Theorize and develop a personal career plan within the field of landscape architecture.
  
LA 4340 - Material Ecologies (3 Credits)  
In this course, we will explore how materials shape and reflect culture, history, and the environment. From everyday objects to treasured artifacts, materials have unique stories that impact how they are used and valued. Students will dive into how technologies, environmental changes, and cultural practices influence the availability and sustainability of materials. Through research, design, and hands-on fabrication, we will examine how materials are connected to both human and non-human systems. The course will empower students to design more sustainable and resilient futures by understanding the past, present, and future of materials.
Exploratory Studies: (CU-SBY, CU-UG)
LA 4440 - Thick Description (3 Credits)  
With the advent of digital tools that construct hyper-real renderings, it is easy to mistake the photoreal for reality. As a tool for designers, representation is more than mimesis, but a means of analysis, process, and communication. This course will introduce workflows for depicting layered elements of complex sites, including not only physical form and visible phenomena, but also the often slow, invisible processes and human impacts that shape sites over time. As a laboratory in both analog and digital media, this course will explore representation through analog methods, ArcGIS Pro, Rhino, LiDAR scanning, and animations. At the heart of the semester’s inquiry will be a deep, engaged exploration of a single site, which each student will revisit throughout the course.
Learning Outcomes:
  • Demonstrate visual literacy and proficiency in using elements of representation, including mark, line, tone, color, point of view, typography, and visual hierarchy.
  • Examine and compare a range of drawing types and their histories in design representation, including Section Perspective, Plan, Perspective, and Isometric and Axonometric Projections.
  • Create workflows that integrate analog and digital representation methods and demonstrate hybrid drawing modes combining analog and digital tools.
  • Demonstrate proficiency in creating drawings using both 2D and 3D methods.
  • Apply research methods to collect reference materials and analyze site, including fieldwork directly from site (frottage, pho-tography, site sketching, terrestiral laser scanning) and other resources (Grass-hopper analysis, books, articles, etc).
  • Apply LiDAR and other iPad tools (including FLIR one thermal imager) to document existing landscape conditions, including both visible (light, ground, materiality, microtopography, vegetation) and invisible (thermal conditions) using novel iPad-based applications.
  • Utilize GIS software to compile, manage, and analyze spatial data.
  • Create and refine 3D site models, including landform, using Rhino software.
  • Use Grasshopper and plugins such as Bison to construct context models and perform analyses of topography, hydrology, aspect, viewshed, wind direction, and shadow.
  • Iterate and develop over time a series of drawings, incorporating layers of information generated from on-site and other research methods, to produce a thickened description of a site.
  • Use notational methods and After Effects to animate drawings through time, con-structing a cohesive narrative.
  
LA 4830 - Seminar in Landscape Studies (1 Credit)  
Topical lecture series and seminars with a different subject and method each time it is offered. Enrolled students will submit written responses to the presentations given, evaluating the content delivered and reflecting on how it impacts their own sense of the design disciplines.
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will become familiar with a variety of topics that span the full range of landscape architecture theory and practice today.
  • Students will gain experience building landscape theory through critical discussion of topical lecturers.
  
LA 4910 - Creating the Urban Eden: Woody Plant Selection, Design, and Landscape Establishment (5 Credits)  
Focuses on the identification, uses, and establishment of woody plants in urban and garden settings. By understanding the environmental limitations to plant growth, students are able to critically assess potential planting sites; select appropriate trees, shrubs, vines, and ground covers for a given site; and learn about the principles and practices of site amelioration and plant establishment. Design followed by written specifications and graphic details are developed to implement these practices. No prior design experience necessary.This course receives more credit than typical for the meeting pattern due to substantial academic activity outside of instructional hours.
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: Plant Science and Landscape Architecture majors.  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-CEL, CU-SBY)
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will gain a first-hand understanding of the heterogeneity of urban and other growing conditions and how these various conditions might influence plant selection, growth, development and survival.
  • Students will develop observation techniques, practice nomenclature and recognize plant characteristics necessary for the identification of deciduous plants in leaf.
  • Students will learn site assessment techniques and analytical skills necessary to diagnose various site conditions and determine how to use this information in planting design and associated detailing.
  • Students will be able to select site-appropriate plant materials and demonstrate technically how to develop plans and construction documents for contractor bidding and installation.
  • Students will learn new transplanting techniques and have an opportunity for hands-on practice.
  • Students will be able to integrate theory with practice by working on site-specific projects.
  
LA 4930 - Second World Urbanism: Landscape Infrastructures (3 Credits)  
The course centers the historical intersection of industrialization, environmentalism, and urbanism in the so-called Second World. It explores the 20th-century history of urban ecological design, focused on ‘landscape infrastructures’ e.g. urban parks, ecosystem services, industrial and communal hygiene, and systems of society-nature relations. Students will apply critical and comparative analysis to the question of when, where and how urbanists’ systems for urban environments and infrastructures proved (un)sustainable. What was the socialist dream of green cities? How did it vary across state-socialist contexts? What has happened to those dreams over time? More specifically, how did urbanists and affiliated specialists approach the design, construction and maintenances of built environments relative to state socialist political, economic and cultural conditions?
Distribution Requirements: (HA-AG)  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-SBY)
LA 4940 - Special Topics in Landscape Architecture (1-3 Credits)  
Topical subjects in landscape architectural design, theory, history, or technology. Group study of topics not considered in other courses.
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021  
LA 4941 - Special Topics in LA History/Theory (3 Credits)  
This course addresses pertinent issues relative to the subject of History of Landscape Architecture, Rural Development, and Urbanism. The instructor(s) of the course are drawn from the permanent and visiting faculty who may either broadly or narrowly define the course’s scope and content. Topics vary each semester. Topical subjects in landscape architectural theory and history. Includes group study of topics not considered in other courses. Counts toward history/theory requirement for landscape architecture majors.
LA 4960 - Internship in Landscape Architecture (1 Credit)  
In this course, students participate in an experiential learning opportunity relevant to the student's focus of study or career goals in landscape architecture. A Landscape Architecture faculty member must serve as supervisor and complete the term grade report. Specific learning goals for the experience are arranged by the student with their internship faculty supervisor and the internship host prior to the start of the internship. All internship courses must adhere to the CALS Internship Guidelines.
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: undergraduate Landscape Architecture students.  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Become familiar with various design phases, from initial conception to implementation, either from the students' own experience in the office or via mentors and team members.
  • Describe design thinking as a cyclical process of negotiation between often conflicting interests.
  • Understand the role of collaboration within a professional office.
  • Evaluate the experience acquired regarding major contributions of Landscape Architecture in terms of creating environments that are sustainable, bio-diverse and just.
  • Explain how different methods within the same design process affect decision making and the quality of the outcome.
  
LA 4970 - Individual Study in Landscape Architecture (1-5 Credits)  
Work on special topics by individuals or small groups.
Exploratory Studies: (CU-UG)
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023  
LA 4980 - Undergraduate Teaching (1-3 Credits)  
Designed to give qualified undergraduates experience through actual involvement in planning and teaching courses under the supervision of department faculty members.
Prerequisites: previous enrollment in course to be taught.  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023  
LA 4990 - Undergraduate Research (1-5 Credits)  
Permits outstanding undergraduates to carry out independent research in landscape architecture under academically appropriate faculty supervision. Research goals should include description, prediction, and explanation, and should generate new knowledge in the field of landscape architecture.
Exploratory Studies: (CU-UG)
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023  
LA 5010 - Composition and Theory I (5 Credits)  
Introduction to landscape architectural design through a series of course modules that engage students in discovering, knowing and engaging the full potential of the landscape medium. In this process-oriented studio students will develop design proposals for real and imagined sites drawing on knowledge and principles from art, aesthetics, science, nature and culture. Each module sequence will also be integrated with the companion LA 5050 course and emphasize the unfolding and emergent nature of designerly thinking, making and doing.
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: graduate students.  
Course Fee: Course Fee, $250. For drafting supplies. Fee amount approximate.  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-CEL, CU-SBY)
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will gain an introductory understanding of the meaning(s), language and vocabulary of landscape through direct engagement and experience in observing, recording, assessing, and designing landscape sites that are both real and imagined. In addition, students will be exposed to historical and contemporary design theories and practices through such things as lectures, readings, films, excursions, and field trips.
  • Through design exercises students will learn how to creatively work with the expressive medium of landscape by using aesthetics, time, space, form, composition, architecture, narrative, ecology, plants, landform, climate, hydrology, culture, and phenomena, to name a few.
  • Students will gain an introductory understanding of landscape architecture as an act of placemaking - wherein the relationship between people and their environment is activated, integrated, and enhanced.
  • Students will learn and practice habits of collaboration, critical inquiry and reflection that are integral to the design process and to studio culture. Large and small group critiques, written and group reflection exercises, collective projects and activities, and studio discussions and dialogues will all be part of creating a supportive and interactive learning environment and studio culture.
  • Students will learn and practice the landscape architectural design process as a set of integrated, enfolding and unfolding design acts involving site selecting; site investigating, assessing, evaluating, analyzing; site programming and planning; site structuring, ordering, functioning; site imagining and representing and; site constructing.
  • While being exposed to specific design methods and strategies, students will be supported and encouraged to probe and discover their own creative voice and approach to landscape architectural design based on their individual interests, background, values, and perspectives.
  • Student will learn how to conceive and represent persuasive landscape architectural design proposals and solutions in the form of carefully crafted drawings and models and well considered written and verbal presentations.
  • Through integrated design and representation exercises and projects, students will learn how the acts of landscape seeing, representation, and making continually interrelate and inform one another.
  
LA 5020 - Composition and Theory II (5 Credits)  
Studio course emphasizing the design process and principles ingenerating design ideas, concepts and plans. The course focuses on the aestheties and functionality of site-specific design.
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: graduate students.  
Course Fee: Course Fee, $250. For drafting supplies. Fee amount approximate.  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-CEL, CU-SBY)
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2022  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will become familiar with and gain confidence in the design process as a method for solving site design problems.
  • Students will create conceptual designs through site inventory and analysis, site opportunities and constraints, program generation and diagramming.
  • Students will be able to refine concepts to spatially-accurate, well-formed schematic designs.
  • Students will develop graphic skills through both hand-rendering and computer generated techniques.
  
LA 5050 - Graphic Communication I (3 Credits)  
This course introduces students to landscape architectural representation and teaches conventions such as basic drafting and orthographic drawing (plan, section, axonometric) alongside freehand drawing, collage, modeling, photography and digital representation. Assignments will be fully integrated with the projects being undertaken in the companion Studio Course LA 5010 emphasizing the seamless interplay of landscape architectural design with the activities of drawing, making and representation through which it is conceived and visualized.
Corequisites: LA 5010 or permission of instructor.  
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will learn, practice and develop habits of drawing and representation that are integral to their ongoing learning, growth and development as a designer. Generative and iterative drawing, orthographic drawing, drafting, modeling, mapping, diagramming, analysis and concept drawing, photography, collage, modeling, and ideation drawing will be among the drawings types practiced.
  • Students will learn how to conduct, record and translate field observations and measurements on landscape sites into site basemaps, plans, and sections.
  • Students will learn how to graphically compose, organize, and present well-conceived visual design presentations that persuasively represent their designs in poster, portfolio, and web-portfolio formats. Their learning will include a basic introduction to Creative Suite programs including In-Design, Photoshop, and illustrator.
  • Students will learn how to digitally prepare, upload, size, store, and secure their graphic work for presentation and portfolio purposes.
  • Students will learn and practice critical evaluation of landscape representation process and products- their own and those of their peers- through group critiques, peer review, and reflection/evaluation sessions.
  • Students will gain a basic understanding of the historic and contemporary way that the theory and practice of landscape representation has reciprocally influenced the theory and practice of conceiving and creating constructed landscapes. This understanding will be achieved through readings, lectures, and visits to Cornell archive and museums collections.
  • Students will learn how to access and use an array of landscape representation resources including books, articles, mapping resources, digital collections, on-line graphic tools, etc.
  
LA 5060 - Graphic Communication II (3 Credits)  
Intermediate-level course focusing on modes of landscape representation from ideation to presentation. Representation modes may include freehand, process drawing, and analysis and orthographic drawing; concept modeling; composite drawings; and visual books.
Prerequisites: LA 5050. Corequisite: LA 5020 or permission of instructor.  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2022  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students shall be introduced to introductory graphical theory and methods of representation.
  • Students shall be introduced to three-dimensional modeling in a digital environment.
  • Students shall be introduced to iterative methods of production in a digital and physical working environments.
  • Students shall be introduced to method of output using physical modeling.
  • Students shall be evaluated based on their use software and physical modeling expertise.
  
LA 5090 - Master of Professional Studies Research Design Studio (4 Credits)  
The MPS Research Design Studio provides MPS students in Landscape Architecture with foundational knowledge in design research theories, methods and tools through readings and discussion, research problem framing and weekly meetings to discuss project process.
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2023, Fall 2022  
LA 5100 - Computer Applications in Landscape Architecture (3 Credits)  
Designed to develop a working knowledge of AutoCAD as a tool for design and construction documentation. Explores the link between AutoCAD, Adobe Create Suite and Microsoft Office softwares.
Enrollment Information: Primarily for: Landscape Architecture majors, all others must get permission of instructor.  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2022  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will be able to organize and set up AutoCAD software to be able to work most efficiently.
  • Students will be able to draw 2D shapes and manipulate those shapes.
  • Students will be able to create construction details using advanced commands, i.e. blocks, x-refs, pen tables.
  • Students will be able to create construction drawings as one would in a professional design setting.
  
LA 5830 - Seminar in Landscape Studies (1 Credit)  
Topical lecture series and seminars with a different subject and method each time it is offered. Enrolled students will submit written responses to the presentations given, evaluating the content delivered and reflecting on how it impacts their own sense of the design disciplines.
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will become familiar with a variety of topics that span the full range of landscape architecture theory and practice today.
  • Students will gain experience building landscape theory through critical discussion of topical lectures.
  • Graduate students will submit written responses to the presentations given, evaluating the content delivered to reflect on how it impacts their own sense of the design disciplines.
  
LA 5900 - Theoretical Foundations (3 Credits)  
This seminar is intended to provide Landscape Architecture Students (as well as Architecture, Planning students) with knowledge of the most relevant histories, theories and critical discourses related to the field from the scope of Landscape Design. We tend to think that theories provide the insight to embitter practice. However, there has been practice that provoked and enhanced disciplinary debate and actually generated a paradigm shift. The course launches a research question: it is only through the examination of influential design works that we can build the multiple dialogues between theory and practice: explore how theory is embedded into disciplinary production and study how pioneer works create specific and innovative disciplinary literature.
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: seniors or graduates in good standing.  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2022  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will become familiar with relevant histories and theories that preceded and influenced excellence in Landscape Practice.
  • Students will have an in depth engagement with influential oeuvres of the Landscape Architecture internationally.
  • Through readings, debates, paper writing, designed and performed interviews, visual exercises, and field trips, students will be able to critically engage not only to the theories and practices themselves but also to reflect on their understanding of what constitutes the making of critical design theory.
  • Students will gain experience building landscape theory through writing and critiquing the writing of their peers.
  • Students will integrate writing, visual representation and oral presentation skills.
  
LA 5910 - Creating the Urban Eden: Woody Plant Selection, Design, and Landscape Establishment (5 Credits)  
Focuses on the identification, uses, and establishment of woody plants in urban and garden settings. By understanding the environmental limitations to plant growth, students are able to critically assess potential planting sites; select appropriate trees, shrubs, vines, and ground covers for a given site; and learn about the principles and practices of site amelioration and plant establishment. Design followed by written specifications and graphic details are developed to implement these practices. No prior design experience necessary. This course receives more credit than typical for the meeting pattern due to substantial academic activity outside of instructional hours.
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: Plant Sciences and Landscape Architecture majors.  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-CEL, CU-SBY)
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will gain a first-hand understanding of the heterogeneity of urban and other growing conditions and how these various conditions might influence plant selection, growth, development, and survival.
  • Students will develop observation techniques, practice nomenclature and recognize plant characteristics necessary for the identification of deciduous plants in leaf.
  • Students will learn site assessment techniques and analytical skills necessary to diagnose various site conditions and determine how to use this information in planting design and associated detailing.
  • Students will be able to select site-appropriate plant materials and demonstrate technically how to develop plans and construction documents for contractor bidding and installation.
  • Students will learn new transplanting techniques and have an opportunity for hands-on practice.
  • Students will be able to integrate theory with practice by working on site-specific projects.
  
LA 5920 - Creating the Urban Eden: Woody Plant Selection, Design, and Landscape Establishment (2 Credits)  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2022  
LA 5960 - Graduate Internship in Landscape Architecture (1 Credit)  
In this course, students participate in an experiential learning opportunity relevant to the student's focus of study or career goals in landscape architecture. A Landscape Architecture faculty member must serve as supervisor and complete the term grade report. Specific learning goals for the experience are arranged by the student with their internship faculty supervisor and the internship host prior to the start of the internship. All internship courses must adhere to the CALS Internship Guidelines.
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Become familiar with various design phases, from initial conception to implementation, either from the students' own experience in the office or via mentors and team members.
  • Describe design thinking as a cyclical process of negotiation between often conflicting interests.
  • Understand the role of collaboration within a professional office.
  • Evaluate the experience acquired regarding major contributions of Landscape Architecture in terms of creating environments that are sustainable, bio-diverse and just.
  • Name the major components of decision making through design thinking iterations.
  • Explain how different methods within the same design process affect decision making and the quality of the outcome.
  • Contextualize the office's/company's practice and compare its major contribution toward knowledge building to excellent awarded professional work.
  
LA 5970 - Graduate Individual Study in Landscape Architecture (0.5-5 Credits)  
Work on special topics by individuals or small groups.
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Work on special topics by individuals or small groups.
  
LA 5980 - Graduate Teaching (1-4 Credits)  
Designed to give qualified students experience through involvement in planning and teaching courses under the supervision of faculty members. The experience may include leading discussion sections, preparing, assisting in desk critiques, and presenting lectures. There are assigned readings and discussion sessions on education theory and practice throughout the semester.
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023  
LA 6010 - Integrating Theory and Practice I (5 Credits)  
This studio focuses upon urban, site-scaled projects that consider significant cultural landscapes. The course explores theories of urban design strategies, sustainable design, and landscape representation. These are explored through a semester-long project that is derived from specific site and place. The integration of site history as well as contemporary urban condition is explored that supports an understanding and relationship between theory and practice.
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: graduate students or permission of instructor.  
Course Fee: Course Fee, $250. For supplies. Fee amount approximate.  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-CEL, CU-SBY)
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will become familiar with and gain confidence in the design research as a method for solving urban planning problems.
  • Students will gain the ability to identify, analyze, and evaluate on-site and adjacent systems (both natural and man-made) and their interactions.
  • Students will be able to develop conceptual designs through three-dimensional electronic models and site-based diagrams.
  • Students will be able to expand conceptual design models into spatially defined and refined urban plans.
  • Students will develop graphic and computer skills to clearly communicate design intent.
  
LA 6020 - Integrating Theory and Practice II (5 Credits)  
This studio builds on prior course work with an expectation that participants can creatively manipulate the program and conditions of a site, with increased emphasis on contemporary technology and 'best' green practices. Projects focus upon the expression of design solutions that grow from and affirm an explicit sense of site and place. Social, cultural, physical, and historic factors and their relationship to site design and planning are critically explored through theory and practice.
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: graduate students.  
Course Fee: Course Fee, $250. For drafting supplies. Fee amount approximate.  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-CEL, CU-SBY)
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2022  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will become familiar with and gain confidence in the design process as a method for solving site planning problems.
  • Students will gain the ability to identify, analyze, and evaluate on-site and adjacent systems (both natural and man-made) and their interactions.
  • Students will be able to develop conceptual designs through three-dimensional models and quick sketches.
  • Students will be able to expand conceptual design models into spatially defined and refined site plans.
  • Students will develop graphic and computer skills to clearly communicate design intent.
  
LA 6030 - Directed Study: The Concentration (1 Credit)  
Working with their advisor, students create a written and visual paper that documents the concentration intent.
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: Landscape Architecture graduate students in final year of study.  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Create a unifying theme around the elective coursework chosen as part of your landscape architecture degree program.
  • Create an explanatory narrative that highlights your interests that are tangential to the field of landscape architecture.
  • Identify how these courses will aid you in your future education or career goals.
  
LA 6050 - Designing Archaeological Exhibits (3 Credits)  
Crosslisted with ARKEO 6020  
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2022, Fall 2021, Fall 2020, Fall 2019  
LA 6120 - Professional Practice (2 Credits)  
This course presents teh student with an understanding of the emerging role of the professional landscape architect. The course helps students choose a type of practice and introduces the problems and opportunities one may encounter in an office or in other professional situations. Topics include the diversity of types of professional practice, marketing professional services, office and project management, construction administration, and ethics.
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2022  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Define the types of industry work available to landscape architects (public, private, non-profit, and academic) and meet current practitioners through guest lectures.
  • Describe the required skills in a landscape architecture firm (project management, construction documentation, construction administration, etc.).
  • Summarize the legal responsibilities of landscape architects to public health, safety, and welfare (the law as it applies to landscape architects).
  • Discuss political, ethical, and social implications of working as a landscape architect.
  • Describe the professional licensure process and its implications (LARE, state licensure and professional organizations).
  • Theorize and develop a personal career plan within the field of landscape architecture.
  • Investigate specific design firms, government, or non-profit organizations through office visits and/or informational interviews.
  
LA 6160 - Site Engineering (5 Credits)  
This course exposes students to the fundamentals of site engineering and its relationship to best environmental practices. Lectures and short vignettes are provided to students and worked-through within the class period. These projects deal with site grading, earthwork estimating; storm water management, site layout, and essential associated professional skills. This course receives more credit than typical for the meeting pattern due to substantial academic activity outside of instructional hours.
Exploratory Studies: (CU-SBY)
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Identify landforms and understand the three-dimensional qualities of landscape and how those qualities directly affect the designs that you create.
  • Understand the correct terminology, concepts and conventions used by Engineers, Landscape Architects and Contractors to achieve the desired built outcomes.
  • Prepare basic site grading plans to enhance their designs.
  • Complete calculations related to soil estimation and storm-water management.
  • Layout a landscape design on site.
  
LA 6180 - Site Assembly (5 Credits)  
This course intends to establish a solid base of technical knowledge about the physical and performative characteristics of traditional building materials and emerging alternatives realted to landscape architecture. In addition, the course encourages students to become astute observers and skilled recorders at the detail to landscape scales, while obtaining a greater materials sensibility to the design and construction processes that eventually translate into built landscapes. This includes the investigation of phenomenal elements and natural processes that take part in the integral relationships established between site assemblies and design intent or material expression. During the course of the semester students will be asked to challenge definitions of material convention, invention, and intervention; through lectures, workshops, discussions, and field trips. Students will examine materials and methods of landscape construction; frameworks for material selection and application; and representations for detail prototyping and construction documentation.
Exploratory Studies: (CU-SBY)
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2022  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will advance research and design methodologies related to material systems and technologies for the built environment.
  • Students will recognize social, economic, and environmental climates of material systems and technologies in landscape architecture; and understand the design opportunities and challenges afforded from past, current, future applications.
  • Students will sharpen observational and technical knowledge of material systems and technologies; and understand the fundamental relationship of siting design and materials with the climatic conditions that might impact their performance.
  • Students will cultivate a sustainable, ethical, and environmentally sensitive design practice and ethos.
  
LA 6340 - Material Ecologies (3 Credits)  
In this course, we will explore how materials shape and reflect culture, history, and the environment. From everyday objects to treasured artifacts, materials have unique stories that impact how they are used and valued. Students will dive into how technologies, environmental changes, and cultural practices influence the availability and sustainability of materials. Through research, design, and hands-on fabrication, we will examine how materials are connected to both human and non-human systems. The course will empower students to design more sustainable and resilient futures by understanding the past, present, and future of materials.
Exploratory Studies: (CU-SBY, CU-UG)
LA 6430 - Rural Adaptation (3 Credits)  
This research seminar will invert the figure/ground relationship of city and hinterlands, focusing on the rural territory as an ecological, social, cultural and spatial entity with its own attendant operations, and, in the context of changing climates, specific risks and opportunities. The Finger Lakes Region, its industries, economies, and ecologies will be the locus of our attention. Throughout the semester, each student will research a specific operational landscape, which will be collectively compiled into a Rural Atlas of the Finger Lakes Region. The atlas will unpack the cultural, geographic and regulatory contexts that shape each particular type of rural landscape, the specific risks and changes projected for the region, as well as speculative tools, management methods and assemblages that might help these communities adapt.
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will interpret and synthesize multiple sources (including lectures, readings, and spatial data) to explore the environmental, economic, social, and political forces that have shaped and continue to shape rural regions, with specific attention to the Finger Lakes.
  • Students will apply design research methods to construct analytical drawings, diagrams and maps of the processes, policies and procedures that create specific rural landscapes.
  • Students will construct a timeline of rural landscape change in the Finger Lakes Region from pre-colonial times to present, synthesizing information from lectures, readings, and additional sources.
  • Students will demonstrate proficiency in ArcGIS software and methods for compiling and analyzing spatial data.
  • Students will evaluate the current and projected impacts of climate change on the Finger Lakes Region, using primary sources and current projection models.
  • Students will demonstrate responsible scholarship through properly citing sources (text, image, and datasets), and adhering to the highest academic standards through the construction of an Atlas bibliography.
  • Students will construct an atlas entry on a specific operational landscape, combining both written and visual analysis, working iteratively through multiple drafts.
  • Students will work collaboratively to produce a class-wide Rural Atlas of the Finger Lakes using shared drawing criteria.
  
LA 6440 - Thick Description (3 Credits)  
With the advent of digital tools that construct hyper-real renderings, it is easy to mistake the photoreal for reality. As a tool for designers, representation is more than mimesis, but a means of analysis, process, and communication. This course will introduce workflows for depicting layered elements of complex sites, including not only physical form and visible phenomena, but also the often slow, invisible processes and human impacts that shape sites over time. As a laboratory in both analog and digital media, this course will explore representation through analog methods, ArcGIS Pro, Rhino, LiDAR scanning, and animations. At the heart of the semester’s inquiry will be a deep, engaged exploration of a single site, which each student will revisit throughout the course.
Learning Outcomes:
  • Demonstrate visual literacy and proficiency in using elements of representation, including mark, line, tone, color, point of view, typography, and visual hierarchy.
  • Examine and compare a range of drawing types and their histories in design representation, including Section Perspective, Plan, Perspective, and Isometric and Axonometric Projections.
  • Create workflows that integrate analog and digital representation methods and demonstrate hybrid drawing modes combining analog and digital tools.
  • Demonstrate proficiency in creating drawings using both 2D and 3D methods.
  • Apply research methods to collect reference materials and analyze site, including fieldwork directly from site (frottage, pho-tography, site sketching, terrestiral laser scanning) and other resources (Grass-hopper analysis, books, articles, etc).
  • Apply LiDAR and other iPad tools (including FLIR one thermal imager) to document existing landscape conditions, including both visible (light, ground, materiality, microtopography, vegetation) and invisible (thermal conditions) using novel iPad-based applications.
  • Utilize GIS software to compile, manage, and analyze spatial data.
  • Create and refine 3D site models, including landform, using Rhino software.
  • Use Grasshopper and plugins such as Bison to construct context models and perform analyses of topography, hydrology, aspect, viewshed, wind direction, and shadow.
  • Iterate and develop over time a series of drawings, incorporating layers of information generated from on-site and other research methods, to produce a thickened description of a site.
  • Use notational methods and After Effects to animate drawings through time, con-structing a cohesive narrative.
  
LA 6900 - Methods of Landscape Architectural Inquiry (3 Credits)  
This lecture provides a comprehensive and critical overview of influential contemporary research in Landscape Architecture. It explores both foundational and emerging approaches within the field, particularly where they intersect with neighboring fields of inquiry. Students will engage with a variety of research frameworks and methodologies through a series of invited lectures, both on campus and online. Active participation in discussions with guest lecturers is expected, along with collective readings and presentations on key texts addressing current research trends. Throughout the semester, students will also develop their own research projects on topics of their choice. While the course offers a broad, eclectic review of innovative scholarly research, it places a particular emphasis on "research by design."
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: graduate students.  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-SBY)
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Identify and synthesize key methods used in Landscape Architecture inquiry through both a broad overview and practical engagement with specific questions, topics, and sites.
  • Analyze and integrate interdisciplinary insights into Landscape Architecture research by examining essential readings across diverse fields, including philosophy, history, design theory, urban design, anthropology, sociology, and political ecology, to construct a comprehensive understanding of the discipline's intellectual foundations.
  • Critically evaluate and apply contemporary research approaches in Landscape Architecture by engaging with presentations from distinguished scholars and actively participating in structured group discussions on current research topics.
  • Demonstrate and execute essential research skills through the completion of an independent research or research-by-design project, incorporating hands-on, field-based exploration within the context of Landscape Architecture.
  
LA 6910 - Landscape Design History II (3 Credits)  
This is an introductory survey of the history and theory of landscape design, broadly defined to include diverse forms of planned human interventions in built and natural environments. We will consider a wide range of planned human interventions in both formal and informal landscapes of the past, including but not limited to aesthetic, functional, and ecological outcomes. Our primary focus will be on landscape design and planning developments from the 17th to late 20th century, placing North American sites and trends in relation to a hemispheric and global context of social, cultural, economic, political, and scientific forces. Critical concepts, sites, and conditions across time, space, and scale are explored through weekly topical lectures, creative exercises, discussions, readings, and essays.
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: sophomore, junior, senior or graduate students.  
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Acquire knowledge of foundational approaches to the history and theory of formal and informal landscapes.
  • Learn to interpret past and present landscapes as primary records of human values, practices, and institutions.
  • Develop skills of theorization and argumentation through written and visual assignments.
  • Explore how investigation of past design is part of the trajectory toward innovative future landscapes.
  
LA 6930 - Second World Urbanism: Landscape Infrastructures (3 Credits)  
The course centers the historical intersection of industrialization, environmentalism, and urbanism in the so-called Second World. It explores the 20th-century history of urban ecological design, focused on ‘landscape infrastructures’ e.g. urban parks, ecosystem services, industrial and communal hygiene, and systems of society-nature relations. Students will apply critical and comparative analysis to the question of when, where and how urbanists’ systems for urban environments and infrastructures proved (un)sustainable. What was the socialist dream of green cities? How did it vary across state-socialist contexts? What has happened to those dreams over time? More specifically, how did urbanists and affiliated specialists approach the design, construction and maintenances of built environments relative to state socialist political, economic and cultural conditions?
Exploratory Studies: (CU-SBY)
LA 6940 - Special Topics in Landscape Architecture (3 Credits)  
Topical subjects in landscape architectural design, theory, history, or technology. Includes group study of topics not considered in other courses.
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will learn to identify, discuss and critique historical efforts to mitigate environmental and industrial health hazards using plants, particularly street trees, with necessary specificity and contextual awareness.
  
LA 7005 - LA Design Studio NYC (5 Credits)  
Redefining the landscape and waterfront around one of Brooklyn's most architecturally iconic industrial shells, the New York Port Authority Grain Terminal will be the focus of this studio. Located at the base of the Gowanus Canal, between Gowanus and Red Hook, the massive structure looms over the water's edge. Over the course of the semester you will partner with local organizations to explore the elements and components that constitute this landscape and establish strategies for the environmental inputs and outputs, land-form and terrain, infrastructures, and urban form which address the social and environmental issues facing the community.
Course Fee: Course Fee, $250. For supplies. Fee amount approximate.  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-CEL, CU-SBY)
Last Four Terms Offered: Summer 2025, Summer 2024, Summer 2023, Summer 2022  
Learning Outcomes:
  • To measure and evaluate the effects of climate change in an urban environment.
  • To identify the design opportunities within the post industrial landscape.
  • Communicate and develop relationships with the local community.
  • Analyze existing urban conditions, and how design can act as an agent of change.
  
LA 7006 - LA Design Seminar NYC (4 Credits)  
The discipline of landscape architecture requires an understanding of the many scales and types of landscape which it can address. Utilizing the location this summer, New York City is a highly complex, urban environment that is deeply entrenched in a long landscape history of urbanism, development, and climate change. Over time the city has adapted to significant changes, and continues to change with new periods of development. Landscape like Central Park, Brooklyn Bridge Park, The High Line, Battery Park City, and Governor's Island have redefined and shaped the profession of landscape architecture around the world. Experiencing these sites first hand is critical to the education of beginning designers, and observing their overall impact on the cities and the intricacies of the design details are invaluable tools in the field. Additionally, office visits and conversation with practicing professionals help shape the understanding and expectations for students.
Last Four Terms Offered: Summer 2025, Summer 2024, Summer 2023, Summer 2022  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Evaluate current contemporary landscape architecture trends and practices in urban environments.
  • Apply their experience of office visits to their future interviews at firms in the field.
  • Describe the contextual characteristics of landscape architecture in dense cities like New York City.
  • Communicate with professional practices about their personal objectives and goals with their careers.
  • Identify the opportunities and challenges with large complex landscape architecture projects.
  
LA 7010 - Urban Design and Planning (5 Credits)  
This studio explores the application of urban design and landscape urbanism techniques to the problems and opportunities of contemporary city making. The studio investigates the social, cultural, natural, and infrastructural systems of urban environments, and develops integrated spatial design strategies involving water quality, public space, and flooding infrastructure. The course introduces three-dimensional computer modeling and digital design media as tools for urban design.
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: graduate students or permission of instructor.  
Course Fee: Course Fee, $250. For supplies. Fee amount approximate.  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-CEL, CU-SBY)
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Develop a disciplinary literacy through landscape history, theory and contemporary practices.
  • Demonstrate ability to engage landscape as community at urban scales through complex programs and design approaches.
  • Students shall be able to develop 3-dimensional digital models at advanced level of skill.
  • Students shall be able to collect and assess data related to urban communities.
  
LA 7020 - Advanced Design Studio (5 Credits)  
This advanced design studio provides students in the final year of the graduate program in Landscape Architecture with the opportunity to work on complex, real-time projects. The overarching goal of this course is to test the student's theoretical, methodological, technical, and representational competency and ability to engage with a range of scales and issues. Through intensive studio work, seminar sessions, independent research, and site visits, students gain the knowledge and skills necessary to develop sound and creative solutions to environmental design problems.
Prerequisites: LA 7010.  
Course Fee: Course Fee, $250. Fee amount approximate.  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-CEL, CU-SBY)
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2022  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students shall work collectively with other disciplines.
  • Ability to assess the landscape in Urban Areas as related to Community Design.
  • Students shall work graphically at a variety of scales.
  • Students shall develop solutions to community projects with contemporary graphic tools.
  • Students will integrate writing, visual representation, and oral presentation skills.
  
LA 8900 - Master's Thesis in Landscape Architecture (4-9 Credits)  
Independent research, under faculty guidance leading to the development of a comprehensive and defensible design or study related to the field of landscape architecture. Work is expected to be completed in final semester of enrollment.
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023