Landscape Architecture
Landscape Architecture straddles the interface between the cultural and natural worlds, addressing design issues inherent in a range of typologies and scales, from specific sites to global systems. RISD’s program prepares you to thoughtfully examine and develop innovative design solutions for the complex issues associated with these environments.
Degree programs
Offering a two- and three-year degree option, the Master of Landscape Architecture provides a rich context for you to learn the discipline alongside a community engaged in a diverse range of creative and critical practices.
In addressing urgent issues around coastal sustainability, this joint RISD/University of Rhode Island degree program enhances your design education with studies in coastal and marine social science, economics, policy, planning and law.
Sustainability Design Lab
Operating at the intersection of interior and landscape architecture, this space fosters understanding of how low-impact design strategies can shape the future of the built environment and practices that can create more inclusive material cultures. In investigating some of the most urgent issues of our time, students working here continually question and revise their own design decisions.
In the studio
Whether working in the field, the CAD Lab, the Model Shop or on their own laptops, you will be challenged to think critically and develop self-reliant design processes. Studio work is complemented by the study of drawing, history, theory, ecology, cultural geography, plants and technology.
Student work
Alumni
Landscape Architecture students graduate with the versatility and self-confidence to work in a wide range of land- and systems-based design fields, pursuing the same interests they explore here. Collaborative in spirit, open-minded and innovative in their approaches to problem solving, alumni self-identify as creators of contemporary culture.
Phoebe Lickwar is the founder of FORGE, a Fayetteville, AR-based landscape architecture firm that cultivates community through landscape design. Throughout her career she has collaborated on several prominent memorials and cultural centers and in 2018 her installation Into the Woods! won the International Garden Competition at Chaumont-sur-Loire in France. An educator in the field, Lickwar also frequently shows fine art photography in juried exhibitions throughout the US.
"Science is my muse for design," says Ian Quate, a landscape architect committed to scientifically-informed, green design. Quate frequently engages in interdisciplinary ventures like the BK BioReactor, an alternative cleanup proposal for Brooklyn's Gowanus Canal that won first prize in the 2015 Gowanus by Design competition. He is the founder of landscape design firm Fruit Studio.
Featured stories
In Monumental Publics, students interrogated Providence’s history before turning to public spaces and monuments in Boston.
A brief interview with one of RISD’s Schiller Family Assistant Professors in Race in Art and Design.
Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture Emily Vogler and alum José R. Menéndez are bringing communities together through the Blackstone River Commons.