MLA Open House attendees and faculty discuss the graduate landscape architecture program
The new Rutgers graduate program in landscape architecture held its open house on November 2 at Blake Hall, the campus home of the Department of Landscape Architecture. The Master’s in Landscape Architecture (MLA) was developed at Rutgers in response to the growing awareness of the need to plan and design for future environments and for “more responsive, sensitive and appropriate site design and land planning.”
The result was a brand new graduate level program that can attract a wide range of prospective master’s candidates, those who have already received a professional design degree and are seeking a more custom-tailored, post-professional program and those students whose undergraduate degrees are in other areas and are looking for a studio-centered, problem-solving instruction.
Dean Cardasis leads tour of the first-year graduate studio.
MLA program director and Professor Dean Cardasis explained the nature of the MLA curriculum, which “accepts students from a broad range of undergraduate majors and life experiences into a course of study that capitalizes on this diversity to address complex environmental design problems.” Prospective students were welcomed by Laura Lawson, chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture, who provided an overview of the department.
More than a dozen LA faculty members were on hand to interact with prospects. Professors Jean Marie Hartman and Wolfram Hoefer presented some of their recent work in conservation and design. MLA student Andy Opt’hof presented images from his study abroad course in Kyoto, Japan, taken under the direction of Professor Seiko Goto.
Together with Professor Tobias Horton, Cardasis led the students on a tour of Blake Hall that included new state of the art computer visualization and fabrications laboratories as well as renovated studios and classroom space. Open House attendees were also shown an exhibition of student work that ranged from gardens to greenways and demonstrating the social, ecological and aesthetic elements of environmental design. Current MLA students were on hand to provide prospective students with first-hand knowledge of the experience ahead of them should they apply and be accepted to Rutgers’ new MLA program.
Prospective candidates should contact Dean Cardasis by email at cardasis@aesop.rutgers.edu.
