2025-2026 Academic Catalog
Welcome to Virginia Tech! We are excited that you are here planning your time as a Hokie.
Welcome to Virginia Tech! We are excited that you are here planning your time as a Hokie.
Landscape Architecture encompasses the design, analysis, planning, management, and stewardship of sustainable environments. Landscape architects design across a wide spectrum of projects: parks and gardens, community design, urban design and planning, green infrastructure, and regional planning, as well as at the scale of watersheds and natural systems. The work of the profession is grounded in the natural and social sciences, draws inspiration from nature and the arts, and is implemented through innovative design, site engineering, construction, land management, and environmental technologies. The Landscape Architecture Program guides students as they address some of the most important challenges of our time: climate change; healthy living and empathetic design; urbanization; just and livable cities; re-imagining water, food, energy and transportation systems; green infrastructure; remediation of spoiled and disturbed sites; and preservation and conservation of critical natural and cultural resources. We believe the work of landscape architecture is at the critical intersection of natural and cultural systems, and that the profession is the most consequential of the design arts in the 21st century.
The core of the academic program is a rigorous sequence of design studios that allows students to explore a broad range of landscape architectural issues, contexts, and project types. Studios are accompanied by discussion, lecture, and laboratory courses that provide systematic and comprehensive coverage of the emerging body of knowledge related to technology, design theory, landscape ecology, and human/environment interaction. Off-campus options include a summer travel studio, a semester study at other academic institutions, as well as an independent studies and professional internships.
The Bachelor of Landscape Architecture (B.L.A.) is a four-year first-professional degree program fully accredited by the Landscape Architecture Accreditation Board. Graduates have a wide range of employment and professional opportunities including work in private practice, multidisciplinary firms, public agencies and municipalities, non-governmental organizations and non-profits.
University policy requires that students who are making satisfactory progress toward a degree meet minimum criteria toward the General Education (Curriculum for Liberal Education) (see "Academics") and toward the degree in Landscape Architecture. Landscape Architecture majors must attain a C- or better in their studio and technology courses to advance to the next courses in these sequences.
Satisfactory progress requirements toward the degree can be found on the major checksheet by visiting the University Registrar website at http://registrar.vt.edu/graduation-multi-brief/index1.html.
Program Chair: Terry Clements2
Professors: T. Clements and M. Kim
Associate Professors: C. L. Bohannon and N. Heavers,
Professor Emeritus: D. Bork, B. Johnson, and P. Miller
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