Letter from the Chair of Landscape Architecture

For a variety of pressing environmental, cultural, economic and artistic reasons, landscape architecture is enjoying a period of renewed visibility and relevance around the world. Whereas gardens, parks and public outdoor spaces are under the traditional purview of landscape architecture, the scope of practice is today expanding to include large-scale public works, infrastructures, post-industrial brownfield sites, landfills, urbanizing sectors of cities and even the marginal leftover spaces of the in-between.

As a consequence, landscape architects need to acquire an ever-growing body of skills—conceptual and imaginative as well as technical and managerial. And, as these tools and techniques evolve into ever-more sophisticated forms of practice, the role of education involves not only the transmission of skill-based knowledge but also the development of critical insight and invention, the stuff of originality and leadership.
This website offers a glimpse into the Master of Landscape Architecture program at PennDesign. In preparing the leading-edge new voices of the next generation of landscape architects, our program strives to provide graduates with the knowledge necessary to be eminently successful.

James Corner
Professor and Chair