Landscape Architecture

Chair: Ann Komara
Email: ann.komara@ucdenver.edu
Office: CU Denver Building 330B
Telephone: 303-315-1000
Fax: 303-315-1050

Associate Chair: Lori Catalano
Email: lori.catalano@ucdenver.edu
Telephone: 303-315-1027

Faculty

Professor:

Lois A. Brink, MLA, University of Pennsylvania

Associate Professor:

Ann Komara, MLA, M Arch Hist, University of Virginia

Assistant Professors:

Jody Beck, MArch, PhD, University of Pennsylvania

Joern Langhorst, Diploma, University of Hanover

Senior Instructors:

Lori Catalano, MLA, University of Pennsylvania

Anthony R. Mazzeo, MLA, University of Pennsylvania

Instructors:

Emmanuel Didier, MLA, MArch, University of Virginia

Leila Tolderlund, MLA, University of Colorado

Additional information about faculty in this department is on the college’s website.

Overview

Landscape architects articulate and design physical spaces supporting healthy, ethical relationships between people, place, and resources while enhancing the inherent qualities of that place. One hundred and fifty years ago our profession rose to meet challenges presented in a rapidly changing industrializing world. Today, pressures of globalization, unprecedented growth, loss of heritage, disconnection between people and the natural environment,and environmental degradation require our design profession to bring the art and science, and the integrity of landscape architecture to bear on issues requiring designs for environmental and cultural solutions.

We educate landscape architects to lead the design and planning process. The fundamental goal of our program is providing students with physical design tools and an ethic of responsibility grounded in natural systems and processes that allows them to connect people to place in ways that enhance well-being and environmental balance. Our educational program operates fluidly in both local and global contexts; design solutions are applied and evaluated at multiple scales. Our curriculum teaches our students to develop design and planning skills that use technologies and design approaches to enhance community, foster equity, remediate environmental balance, conserve and regenerate resources, and create places that hold value for current and future generations.

The Degree

We deliver a fully accredited Master of Landscape Architecture (MLA) for first professional degree students and post-professional students (those already holding an accredited undergraduate degree in architecture or landscape architecture). Our program balances theory and practice, and emphasizes design to support human well-being and environmental balance. We educate landscape architects to lead the design and planning process.

The MLA curriculum revolves around a sequence of design studios, supported by core content classes and a variety of seminar courses. The curriculum fosters an ethic of responsibility grounded in natural systems and processes and an understanding of cultural and community values. Our educational program operates fluidly in both local and global contexts and at a variety of scales. Students learn skills working on relevant urban and rural projects. Studios and courses engage current issues, define future trends, and explore the role of landscape architecture in a rapidly changing world. Throughout the program, our students learn and apply design and planning skills that use technologies and design approaches to enhance community, foster equity, remediate environmental balance, conserve and regenerate resources, and create places that hold value for current and future generations.

Denver’s vibrant professional design and planning community supports our students through guest lectures and participation in design reviews, internships and mentor programs, and opportunities to visit offices and meet practitioners and leaders in our field.

Program Objectives

The department has developed five broad program objectives in support of our mission. These objectives identify what students should know and be able to do by the time they graduate and are linked to a series of measurable student learning outcomes. The five specific educational objectives are:

Design: Students will be able to formulate questions and arguments about landscape and its role as a significant cultural medium, and determine processes and practices that lead to transformative actions based on ethical, communicative and content knowledge criteria.
Communication and Representation: Students will be able to create and employ appropriate representational media to effectively convey ideas on subject matter contained in the professional curriculum to a variety of audiences, and to articulate and convey ideas verbally and in writing.
Professional Ethics: Students will be able to critically evaluate local and global ramifications of social issues, diverse cultures, economic and ecological systems, and professional practice as guiding principles for design thinking and implementation.
Content Knowledge: Students will be able to develop a critical understanding and application of the histories, theories and practices of landscape architecture and its role in reflecting and shaping culture and environments.
Research: Students will be able to develop and apply a diligent, systematic and critical inquiry in support of design and scholarship.