University of Tennessee School of Landscape Architecture

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Knoxville, TN
University of Tennessee School of Landscape Architecture

Graduate Landscape Architecture Landscape Architecture integrates the experience of natural and constructed place into the design of memorable landscapes.

The University of Tennessee Landscape Architecture Program is the first, and only accredited landscape architecture program in the state of Tennessee. The core values of the Graduate Program in Landscape Architecture are based on a design-centered curriculum that promotes ethical imperatives, critical thinking, and sustainable practices. These values are expressed in an education that challenges students to become leaders, to master the discipline, and to engage the cultural, political, and regional realities of real-world problems in designed and naturally occurring landscapes. The program is committed to preparing our students for leadership roles not only within the profession, but also within the broader communities they join and influence.

09/15/2026

Studio Introduction & Pin-Up

LAR 551: Dismantling Landscapes
Instructor(s): Scottie McDaniel

One month into the semester and our studios are well underway with projects and pin-ups. Our first-year studio completed their first pin-up, interpreting linework through materials and processes to create various models. These models are experiments focused on manipulating materials: How could clay be sculpted? How can paper be folded, crinkled, or cut? How could two different materials be combined to complement each other?

This studio introduces students to our Landscape Architecture program, exposing them to software and processes while deconstructing preconceived notions of what landscape is. The goal of this studio is not to define one set method of design, but to foster adaptability, experimentation, collaboration, and informed decision-making.

09/03/2026

MLP Summer Research

“Formative Landscapes, Creative Agency, and Community Authorship in Whitehaven, Memphis” by Allondre Wilson

Inspired by the recent Mississippi Riverfront renovations in Memphis, TN. Formative Landscapes, Creative Agency, and Community Authorship in Whitehaven, Memphis” explores how landscape architecture and architecture can help communities cultivate greater agency in shaping, caring for, and imagining the places they call home. Centered in Whitehaven, Memphis, the project draws from community memory, ecological systems, oral histories, and speculative design to envision a network of spaces that foster refuge, belonging, creative agency, and community authorship across generations. By making design knowledge and processes more accessible, the work asks how residents can become not only users of their environments, but active co-authors of their futures.

09/01/2026

MLP Summer Research

"Carbon Mirror" by Nora Goldhammer

This project examines the contradictions between landscape architecture’s ecological ethos (whether professionally or culturally imposed) and the invasive, extractive, and carbon-intensive construction practices used to realize climate-mitigating projects.

According to the Global Status Report 2017, published by the United Nations Environment Program and the International Energy Agency, building and construction account for 40% of the global, yearly carbon dioxide emissions.

To explore what a low-carbon landscape aesthetic might look like, this critique pushes the current conversation past accounting for emission reductions and toward a cultural shift. If landscapes are a reflection of our culture, what do the current methods of landscape construction say about our values? Furthermore, is what we see in the reflection enough to inspire a re-evaluation/re-making/re-thinking/re-designing? Can landscape architecture develop a new aesthetic and cultural value system in which decarbonization becomes a fundamental landscape-making practice rather than an environmental performance objective?

08/19/2026

SoLA Highlights

Students within the School of Landscape Architecture are back in the Arts and Architecture building at UTK, diving into another semester of studio, classes, and projects. Stay tuned to learn more about each studio topic, and of course, welcome back, students.

06/24/2026

What started as a student project at the University of Tennessee ha...

05/18/2026

Final Pin-Up

LAR 552: "Celluloid States"
Instructor(s): Andrew Madl & Gale Fulton

Celluloid States explores landscape architecture and cinema as parallel practices that construct meaning through time, material, and atmosphere. The studio treats film as a generative tool for design - translating cinematic elements such as color, light, narrative, and movement into design strategies for landform, planting, hydrology, and infrastructure.

05/14/2026

Studio Final Review

LAR 554/556: "CounterLandscapes: Charleston"

Students situated themselves within the physical, cultural, and ecological fabric of Charleston, SC. Building from earlier research and ritual practices, students designed independent landscape interventions—gardens, learning, allées, framing devices, and constructed landforms—that prioritized spatial experience, repetition, and use over time. Scale and scope remained flexible, and operated through embodied encounter rather than abstract analysis. Ritual, attunement, and celebration functioned as design logics, shaping how spaces are inhabited, revisited, and cared for. Projects unfolded through ceremony, seasonal change, communal maintenance, and recurring gathering, translating research into shared, lived experience. This work is not didactic or problem-solving; instead, it emphasizes poetic, affective interventions that make land histories.

05/11/2026

Final Review

LAR 554/556: "Harvesting Beauty...the Bond of Live Things"
Instructor(s): Sarah Bolivar

Building on play, wonder, and exploration, students designed strategies to re-stitch the Knoxville College campus with its surrounding neighborhood. In light of the College's uncertain future, students designed through an ethos of care and maintenance—reimagining histories, site conditions, and materials—to foreground both memory and communal futures. Many thanks again to Dasha Lundy for helping us to learn more about this special place.

05/05/2026

Master of Landscape Project, Final Review

Congratulations to our graduate students who recently completed their MLP Final Review. These projects were curated testaments to topics our students have a great interest in, spending the entire year developing, researching, and designing, pushing new ideas forward. Congratulations again students.

Projects:

“Machine Ecologies”, by Hannah Bowman
“HYDROscape”, by Margaret Marando

04/21/2026

2/3rds Review

Recently, our students participated in 2/3rds reviews for their current studio projects. Students presented their projects thus far to critics and received feedback on how to further develop their projects for the final reviews scheduled for next week.

Address

College Of Architecture + Design Art + Architecture Building 1715 Volunteer Boulevard, Room 224
Knoxville, TN
37996

Website

http://archdesign.utk.edu/academics/graduate-landscape-architecture/

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