The Department of
Landscape Architecture

Our Mission

The Department of Landscape Architecture prepares designers, scholars, and practitioners to shape landscapes that are ecologically resilient, culturally meaningful, and responsive to the urgent challenges of our time.

We understand landscapes as both cultural constructions and living systems — formed by history, economy, and social values, and continually transformed by ecological processes and human and non-human agency, as vegetation, wildlife, and other organisms actively work to remake the places they inhabit. Our faculty bring research and practice expertise from diverse geographies and cultures, showing how design can hold planetary change and local particularity in the same frame. As technology and the global exchange of ideas exert a homogenizing pull on places worldwide, landscape architecture offers a way to embrace the future without erasing the cultures and traditions that make a place distinct.

What We Value

We value ecological responsibility — landscapes designed to support resilient, living systems rather than work against them. We value the cultural and historical depth embedded in every site, and the patient study required to understand it. We hold research and practice in close relation, believing that rigorous scholarship and real-world design each sharpen the other. We draw strength from a global and interdisciplinary perspective, learning across geographies, cultures, and fields of knowledge. And above all, we believe design should serve the public good — meeting the challenges of urbanization and climate change with landscapes that deepen the relationship between people and places through greater biodiversity and beauty.

Students in our MLA programs engage directly with this work — through a robust studio curriculum, a wide range of courses, and faculty-led research — developing the analytical and creative skills to imagine and shape better futures through design.

—Anita Berrizbeitia, Interim Chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture

As the challenges of the built environment rarely correspond to traditional disciplinary boundaries, coursework in the MLA Program spans the depth and breadth of the field and enjoys strong pedagogical connections to urban planning, urban design, and architecture. MLA candidates enjoy access to and engagement with the extra-Departmental assets of the Graduate School of Design including a robust calendar of lectures, exhibitions, and events attendant to current design culture across disciplines as well as the Advanced Studies Programs, the Aga Khan Program, the Joint Center for Housing Studies, and the Loeb Fellowship. MLA candidates benefit from proximity to events and discussions in cognate disciplines across campus in the history of art and architecture, ecology, engineering, environment, and the arts. The Department’s coursework and culture are leavened by a range of institutional assets and resources unique in the discipline including the Harvard Forest, the Arnold Arboretum, the Harvard Center for the Environment, and Dumbarton Oaks.

Professional practice evidences the specialized actions, behaviors, and ethical standards expected of individuals in a role of advising, designing, and executing projects, extending beyond technical competence to include accountability, integrity, and respectful interaction. The nature of practice is itself a design challenge in its own right—we design practice—supported by innovative research and a wide range of courses on the proven and emerging ways in which the disciplines of design create impact in our rapidly changing technological, social, and environmental context. Led by Professor Elizabeth Bowie Christoforetti, who chairs the Practice Forum, the transdisciplinary group is comprised of faculty from all departments including Jeffry Burchard, Daniel D’Oca, Adam Frampton, Jenny French, Gary Hilderbrand, Eric Höweler, Karen Janosky, Jungyoon Kim, Hanif Kara, Grace La, Dana McKinney White, Chris Reed, and Elizabeth Whittaker.

Landscape architecture today enjoys greater cultural relevance, public visibility, and potential for professional leadership than at any time in recent history. The Department has been among the most significant centers in the world for the production and dissemination of landscape knowledge. The Department aspires to be the preeminent venue for the education of landscape architects as they are increasingly called upon as design professionals uniquely capable of representing and responding to the challenges found at the intersection of design culture, urbanization and environment.

Together, we are educating a generation of activist practitioners, theorists, advocates, and more—a virtual army of climate warriors who will lead the charge for regenerative, adaptive ways of reimagining a just and sustainable world.

Learn more about our commitment to climate.