• Designing Ideas

    Into Action

    Everyone loves the big idea, but now it's down to designing specifically how that idea will work. Instead of just a green roof, it's the exact details of how it will look. Not only that, but many projects require a series of drawing as part of a whole master plan or site plan. From there a new set of drawings will cover the exact details of where each individual plant, stone, fountain, or bench should go.

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    Site Plans

  • Bryant Park

    Rice University

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    ABOUT LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE

    The Designs

    Think of iconic places like New York City's Central Park and the FDR Memorial in Washington, D.C. But also consider your downtown square, your local park, or even your own backyard. Green roofs, urban farms, corporate campuses—all define landscape architecture. Types of projects include:

    School and college campuses

    Corporate and commercial grounds

    Public gardens and arboreta

    Historic preservation and restoration

    Hotels, resorts, golf courses

    Hospital and other facility sites

    Interior landscapes

    Land planning

    Landscape art and earth sculpture

    Monument grounds

    Parks and recreation

    Land reclamation and rehabilitation

    Residential sites

    Security design

    Streetscapes and public spaces

    Therapeutic gardens

    Transportation corridors and facilities

    Urban and suburban design

    Water resources

  • What's the

    Big Idea

    It's brainstorming, sketching, or otherwise imagining what will make the site special. Will a park include an amphitheater or an athletic field? Should the space use a green roof, water system, or solar panels? Landscape architects use initial drawings (like this video) or 3-D models to propose the big ideas. If it's a large public project, there may be more opportunity for public feedback.

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    Tools of the Trade

  • All 50 states require landscape architects to earn a license to practice, ensuring that the designs protect the health, safety, and welfare of all users. In fact, you can't even call yourself a landscape architect without a license.

    Learn more about careers in landscape architecture.

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    EDUCATION

    Designing a Landscape Architect

    Think you have what it takes? Landscape architects typically hold a bachelor's or master's degree in landscape architecture, covering a broad spectrum of design, science, and technical know-how. Topics include site design, historic preservation, planning, grading and drainage, horticulture, and even subjects like psychology.

    More than 60 schools offer bachelor's or master's programs across the country. Many graduates will go on to work in landscape architecture or other design firms. Organizations with large amounts of land to manage will also employ landscape architects. Companies like Disney, federal government agencies like the National Park Service, local government agencies, parks and recreation departments, universities, and others all staff landscape architects.

  • EducationAbout
    Collaboration    Benefits

    College campus? Check. Downtown park?
    We got that. Hospital grounds? Neighborhood plans? Public gardens? All of that and more. Landscape architects design almost anything under the sky.

  • High Line

    RELATED DESIGN PROFESSIONS
    Architects — Primarily design buildings and structures with specific uses, such as homes, offices and schools.

    Civil Engineers — Apply scientific principles to the design and construction of public infrastructure such as roads, bridges and utilities.

    Urban Planners — Develop a broad, comprehensive overview of development for entire cities and regions.

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    LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE COLLABORATION

    Designing with Others

    Landscape architects design, often working with landscaping or other construction companies to install those designs. Think of the fashion designer imagining an outfit while a clothing manufacturer makes the apparel, or an artist designing a wall poster that's printed by another company. Landscape architects and contractors are complementary but highly distinct professions.

    Beyond construction companies, landscape architects often collaborate with a whole host of other professionals to make up the design team. A project like the High Line not only includes landscape architects, but architects, engineers, and multiple contractors as well. Other projects may include planners, horticulturists, soil scientists, medical professionals, or other specializations in order to solve the design challenge.

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    Breaking Ground

    and Beyond

    A landscape architect's job doesn't end with the final plan. The designers routinely visit the site, meet with the client, and work with the construction team to ensure all goes smoothly. After completion, landscape architects evaluate the success of the project and, depending on the client, continue to oversee management of the site post-construction. Many cities and counties have their own landscape architects on staff to manage all the parks and public land.

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    Coordination

    Site Visit

    Data Analysis

  • ASLA Green Roof

    Learn more about how landscape architects can save cities millions of dollars, reduce obesity, and more.

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    BENEFITS OF LANDSCAPE
    ARCHITECTURE

    Designing
    Awesome

    Restoring endangered wetlands, reducing hospital stays, securing government and other buildings, removing toxins from rainwater — these aren't pie in the sky. It's what landscape architects are designing right now. A few examples include:

    Healing gardens — Working with medical professionals, landscape architects create landscapes that reduce stress, boost the immune system, improve Alzheimer's symptoms, encourage physical activity, and reduce time spent in hospitals.

    Bioremediation — Landscape architects use natural systems of plants, fungi, or soil microbes to transform formerly polluted industrial sites into a safe and valuable public green space.

    Green Roofs — Instead of a black tar roof, a living system of plants and soil can actually reduce air temperature by 59 degrees in the summer, save winter heating costs, clean and store rainwater, and provide habitat to pollinating insects and birds.

    Energy Savings — Landscape architects can utilize trees, shrubs and other plants to lower a home's heating/cool costs by as much as 50 percent in the summer and up to 8 percent in the winter.

  • Learning the

    Landscape

    Design starts here. Before breaking out the sketch pad, landscape architects need to figure out what the client needs, research the site, identify possible uses, and, depending on the project type, solicit community input. In fact, much of landscape architecture focuses on the analysis, planning, and stewardship of the land before any design begins.

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    Community

    Local Government

    Site Analysis

Next

Subtle Imagination

Sometimes it takes a lot of imagination to use what's already there. This weed-choked, silt-filled irrigation pond clearly needed help. However, just a little TLC and some subtle designs dramatically transformed the area into a family gathering spot.

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History Lessons

History matters, even in landscape architecture. The analysis phase for Caltech identified six "lost" landscapes from the school's past, which helped inform proposed future developments on campus.

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Building Blocks, Block by Block

Community input is essential for any public project. In Atlanta, local residents used building blocks as part of an exercise to figure out just how dense they wanted future neighborhood developments. The results fed into the final plan outlining how to manage the city's long-term growth.

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Big Problems, Big Fixes

Sometimes a space just needs a little invigoration. Other times it's a former Chinese shooting range and garbage dump surrounded by slums. These incredibly tough challenges require extensive analysis before starting the design process, but end with tremendous results.

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Uncanny Valley

It's seriously hot in Arizona (over 100 degrees a quarter of the year hot), making shade a pretty important component in any design. This computer model not only shows off the Mesa Arts Center, but how the design provides shade to visitors — matching up almost exactly with the finished project.

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Put a Slide on It

Steep slope in your yard? Put a slide on it. The landscape architect sketched out a simple and creative idea for this underutilized space, designing a play area directly on the hill.

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Drawing a Model

While this sketch formed the initial idea, it doesn't quite illustrate the experimental wetland that's part of the new science building at University of Minnesota Duluth. The design team later created additional concepts — including the 3D model here — to better show the design ideas.

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Expect Change

Change happens, especially when it comes to design ideas. This is the original winning design for HtO, an urban beach in downtown Toronto. However, you'll see that the final project includes several subtle but noticeable changes, like the addition of umbrellas near the water.

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Conceiving the Concept

Initial concepts are often, well, conceptual. This is an early sketch of a 25-acre project at the Gannett/USA Today headquarters outside of Washington, D.C. While there are many steps between the initial drawing and construction, the final project isn't that far from the first sketch.

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Perennial Color

Because landscapes are alive, they grow and change year to year, season to season. The design of the Lurie Garden at Chicago's Millennium Park included careful planning of how the colors would change throughout the year.

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Plans Having Plans

Like a Russian doll, many smaller planning docs make up the guts of a site plan, allowing the construction team to implement specific design elements. An example is this materials plan for New York City's Museum of Modern Art roof garden.

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Flat Roof Farming

Complex projects can use simple diagrams to convey specific details. You'd never know it from the planting plan, but it's part of a school rooftop farm that grows more than 1,000 pounds of vegetables each year.

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Residential Scale

This smaller-scale, zig-zagging backyard site plan includes all of the materials and plants proposed by the landscape architect. Trees are noted as empty circles, which estimate the canopy sizes while also showing what will be installed underneath.

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Big Idea to Big Site Plan

Remember that big idea? Drawn to exacting standards, site plans like this put designs into action and serve as the project's roadmap — in this case for New York City's Columbus Circle.

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In for the Long Haul

Sometimes a project will span a few months, other times a few decades. At Sequoia National Park, a long-term management plan protected the giant trees while restoring the park's natural beauty. Twenty-year-long projects like this require both park-staffed landscape architects and outside designers.

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Design on a Dime

Sometimes the design will require unique construction techniques, like this water treatment facility in Connecticut. Using bioengineering methods, the design and construction team created these undulating hills on a tight budget.

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Real. Natural. Cleaning. Power.

This new Shanghai wetland cleans 500,000 gallons of water every day. The evaluation of this project showed that the natural system could transform the water from being completely unsafe to being used in everything but drinking.

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Voices of Reason (and Fear)

That tiny voice inside a landscape architect's head often whispers, "Can you actually build this thing?" In addition to solving the design challenge, landscape architects collaborate with architects, engineers, and construction teams to make sure the design can and does get built — like this green roof.

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