Landscape Architecture

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

Interim Associate Chair: Leila Tolderlund
Email: leila.tolderlund@ucdenver.edu
Telephone: 303-315-1028

Faculty

Professor:

Lois A. Brink, MLA, University of Pennsylvania

Associate Professors:

Ann Komara, MLA, M Arch Hist, University of Virginia
Joern Langhorst, Diplom (MLA), University of Hannover

Assistant Professor:

Jody Beck, MArch, PhD, University of Pennsylvania

Assistant Professors (Clinical Teaching Track):

Lori Catalano, MLA, University of Pennsylvania
Leila Tolderlund, MLA, University of Colorado Denver

Senior Instructor:

Anthony R. Mazzeo, MLA, University of Pennsylvania

Instructor:

Emmanuel Didier, MLA, MArch, University of Virginia

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

Overview

The master of landscape architecture program balances theory and practice, and emphasizes design to create health, well-being and environmental resilience through design in the public realm. Our program distinguishes itself by engaging with its unique location, providing opportunities for students to obtain dual degrees and certificates, and the distinctive curricular emphases on health and well-being, water in the West, and emerging sustainable practices. We educate landscape architects to lead the design and planning process.

Located in the heart of Denver, our program embraces design in the public realm, allowing students to engage in addressing real-world issues such as growth, urbanization, water and healthy communities. The program focuses on Denver and the Front Range as a learning laboratory for students to engage with communities addressing relevant issues of this region yet challenging students to think critically about global application.

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). 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 communities support 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.

Central Themes

The MLA program is preparing students to address current and future problems and challenges in local, regional and global contexts. An issues-based approach ensures that students will be exposed to and participate in the development of new responses to emergent and ongoing crises and opportunities, emphasizing environmental and social justice as a key element for the design of livable, sustainable and resilient places and landscapes. The department has been involved in the recovery of the Lower 9th Ward in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, working with the local community for five years. The Learning Landscapes program has successfully redesigned almost 100 schoolyards in Denver. We have addressed issues of water, food scarcity and urban agriculture, the redesign and recovery of post-industrial sites and mining landscapes, issues of health and livability in disadvantaged communities and neighborhoods, the redesign of storm water systems on various scales to respond to catastrophic flooding, developed scaled strategies and approaches to adapt to wildfires. Many of these projects have involved multiple classes over several years, and have made major impacts on the places and communities. Students are immersed in opportunities to not just learn, but to make meaningful change, and interact with community members and professionals from many different backgrounds and disciplines, gaining invaluable experience and skills in working and communicating in interdisciplinary teams.

Big Thinking

We believe that the issues, challenges and opportunities landscape architects face are interrelated, spanning all scales from a small private yard to neighborhood to city to region to the world, and involve a wide range of social, cultural, ecological and economic systems, requiring critical and creative thinking that transcends scales and is cross-, trans- and interdisciplinary.

Critical Issues

We strongly believe that Landscape Architecture is uniquely positioned to make major contributions to the big and urgent questions and issues that affect human and non-human systems. Climate change, resource scarcity, water and food are as critical as the design and building of landscapes and places that are about more than just sustainability and resilience and provide opportunities for people to thrive.

Meaningful Change

While the functioning and performances of human and non-human systems are critical, good design does more than to just provide solutions to problems. It provides opportunities for people to interact with places over time, it empowers them to understand the dynamics that affect their environments and to participate in the ongoing processes of changing place and changing communities, thus becoming authors and co-authors of the places they shape and inhabit.