Sam Fox School Announces MLA Program

Doroth????????(R)???????(C)e Imbert is Associate Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture, where she teaches the design core studios Planning and Design of Landscapes and Landscape Architecture Design. Her seminars include Designing Women, Landscape and/in the City: The Case of Switzerland, and Modernity and European Landscape Architecture. Imbert organized the exhibition and international symposium "Constructing the Swiss Landscape," which took place at the GSD in December 2006-January 2007.

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The Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts will launch a new Master of Landscape Architecture (MLA) program in Fall 2010, announced Bruce Lindsey, dean of the College of Architecture and the Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design.

"The discipline of landscape architecture is central to solving many of today's most pressing environmental concerns," said Lindsey, who also serves as the E. Desmond Lee Professor for Community Collaboration. "In terms of sustainable design, the use of natural resources and large-scale ecological planning, landscape architecture is leading the way. Indeed, within contemporary architectural practice, landscape architecture has been key to developing a new sense of environmental ethics, one that stresses architecture's capacity to connect us with our environment and to one other."

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Bruce Lindsey, the E. Desmond Lee Professor for Community Collaboration and dean of the College of Architecture and the Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design.

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The MLA program will offer both two- and three-year options (depending on students' undergraduate backgrounds) leading to a professional MLA degree. Enrollment for the first year will be limited to 10 students, though subsequent classes likely will expand to 12-15 students. In addition, the program will offer a number of joint degree opportunities, including a dual MLA/Architecture and MLA/Urban Design.

Chairing the MLA program will be Doroth????????(R)???????(C)e Imbert, currently associate professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture at Harvard's Graduate School of Design (GSD). A noted scholar as well as a practicing landscape architect, Imbert was program director for the GSD's MLA Degree Programs in 2004-05. Her appointment in the Sam Fox School will be effective Jan. 1, 2010.

"The landscape architecture program draws on a unique set of institutional, regional, and international resources available at the Sam Fox School," Imbert explains. "St. Louis will function as a laboratory for understanding and testing ecological and urban theories at the local scale, from brownfield reclamation to urban agriculture systems."

"Our program will focus on design, ecology and urbanism," Imbert continues. "This three-pronged approach is geared to developing students' critical and conceptual abilities, and to preparing them to become leaders within professional and academic spheres."

The curriculum will be centered on a sequence of core and advanced design studios supported by instruction in technology, history and theory. Additional coursework will focus on ecology, horticulture, materials, construction and other related issues. Students also will have the opportunity to explore different landscapes and cultures through international graduate architecture studios in Barcelona, Buenos Aires, Helsinki, Seoul and Tijuana.

Drawing on the university's wider resources, the MLA program will offer additional joint degree options with the Olin School of Business, the George Warren Brown School of Social Work and the Master of Construction Management in the School of Engineering. Meanwhile the Sam Fox School will begin offering a new undergraduate minor in landscape architecture in Fall 2011.

The deadline for applications is Feb. 1, 2010. Students can apply online through the Sam Fox School's graduate admissions page. For more information, visit samfoxschool.wustl.edu or call (314) 935-6227 or (800) 295-6227.

Information also will be available as part of the Sam Fox School fall open house Nov. 2. The all-day event will give prospective students an opportunity to meet with current students and faculty and to learn firsthand about Sam Fox School programs. For reservations or more information, call (314) 935-6227 or e-mail wuarch@wustl.edu.

Source: WUSTL News Image