Sustainability by Design

Only beauty can save the world _{Fyodor Doestoevsky}

The complex environmental, economic, and socio-cultural problems of the 21st century play out on the land. They demand integrative, collaborative, and beautiful design solutions. The Department of Landscape Architecture’s graduate and undergraduate programs offers instruction that encompasses the range of geographic, systemic, and temporal scales at which landscape operates. We aim to reframe landscape architecture as an activist process, creating innovative solutions to the pressing issues of our time.

The Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Minnesota is situated within the College of Design—a college that also contains architecture, interior design, graphic design, housing studies, and related disciplines and interdisciplinary centers, making it one of the most comprehensive and engaged design colleges in the country.

DesignIntelligence ranks the graduate landscape architecture program at the University of Minnesota among the most admired for its community engagement, strong environmental focus, and scholarship aligned with education. Our faculty and students move seamlessly from the studio into the community and practice. Students work as Research-in-Practice Assistants in agencies, firms, and non-profits in the Twin Cities. Many students also lead and participate in initiatives of their own making, such as Students for Design Activism and Greenlight, or in professional organizations like the student chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects. Our college also has one of the largest student-practitioner mentoring programs of any North American design school, which underscores the strong ties between the college and local practitioners—many of whom teach as adjunct faculty in the department.