Landscape Architecture

Do You Want to Improve the Natural Environment through Design and Sustainability?

The Landscape Architecture program’s purpose is to create, enhance, and sustain the built, natural and social environments. Landscape Architecture is a licensed professional discipline concerned with landscape design, environmental design and environmental planning.

The work of landscape architects is to organize and give character to the future managed or constructed landscape, bringing the same skills to the shaping and construction of landforms, plants, structures, and materials, and service to the client, as an architect brings to a building.

Colorado State University offers one dynamic programs in Landscape Architecture; the Bachelor of Science in Landscape Architecture program (BSLA). Taking part in this challenging course of study, you will prepare yourself for a career in a widely-respected profession that is licensed by all 50 states.

You have the opportunity to study design as accomplished landscape architects see it: designing spaces as well as planning and preserving them. Nature, culture, form, and space: these are the classic elements of landscape architecture with which you work in a series of design studios and related courses. Here, you focus on a variety of environmental design and planning projects that grow more complex as the curriculum proceeds.

Throughout the program, emphasis is on the relationship between design, nature, and society: the impact of environments on the individual as well as the impact of humans on the environment. It is important to note that registration laws for landscape architects in all 50 states specify graduation from schools, such as Colorado State University, that are accredited by the Landscape Architecture Accreditation Board of the ASLA. Please click here for ASLA’s information about becoming a landscape architect.

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN

Basic problem-solving skills and knowledge for comprehensive landscape design that include the following characteristics:
- Research of natural systems, cultural systems, users, and precedents
- Analysis of related site systems and users
- Synthesis, the articulation of formal responses to research and analysis of findings
Technical competency in basic landscape architectural methods and communication, including organization of writing, project development, representation, and documentation
Fundamental knowledge and skills appropriate to public and private entry-level landscape architecture including:
- Application of digital media
- Technology applications for analysis and design
- Landscape design
- Representation for analysis and design