德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校

Today’s urban environments confront increasingly complex social and ecological challenges in which overlapping, dynamic systems oftentimes reveal competing priorities. As experienced in Texas, these challenges include: a population set to double by 2050; periods of prolonged drought and erratic weather; water intensive energy extraction; unsustainable development policies; inadequate infrastructure. These distinct, but interrelated variables require technical sophistication and ecological acumen in order to create sustainable landscapes that address social needs, provide ecosystem services, and enhance a sense of place.

By recognizing that these shifts shape our public spaces, the Graduate Program of Landscape Architecture frames these concerns as guiding factors in the design and construction of the urban landscape. In this manner, those spaces by which the landscape is defined – such as infrastructure systems, urban watersheds, industrial sites, suburban communities, and city fabric – become the laboratories for the program’s educational focus.

Working in conjunction with allied design disciplines represented within the school – including Architecture, Urban Design, Community and Regional Planning, Historic Preservation, and the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center – the professional curriculum emphasizes interdisciplinary endeavors that serve the needs of the community, the state, and the society at large. The program’s pedagogy situates design as a process of inquiry, whereby the coordinated design curriculum introduces a set of representation, spatial, theoretical, and material practices by which to integrate the landscape’s structure, function, and change over time. The curriculum places an emphasis on design of the built environment including its social dimension, sensory experience, and ecological systems. Working from measure to agency, data to decision, the pedagogy positions design as a synthetic endeavor that evolves as much from context and speculation as it does from questions of technique, beauty, and delight.

The Landscape Architecture Program at the University of Texas as Austin offers two degree programs:

Master of Landscape Architecture, First Professional Degree
Master of Landscape Architecture, Post-Professional Degree