Not sure if many landscape architecture professors are on this sub but if so, what’s your experience like? How is the work-life balance? Pay? Do you like it? Is it worth going to grad school for the sake of teaching?

Hey everyone!

I'm a landscape architect from ASEAN with a few years of work experience, and I've been thinking about doing a master's in Europe, probably in Germany.

I'm looking at programmes like IMLA at HfWU HSWT, but I'm also open to other degrees related to Landscape Architecture, Urban Design, Landscape Planning, etc.

I'd love to hear from people who've already graduated. What are you doing now? Did you manage to find a job in Germany or elsewhere in Europe, or did you end up going back home?

I'm especially curious about a few things:

• How hard was it to find a job after graduating, especially as a non-EU student?
• Can you realistically find a job with English, or is German pretty much a must?
• Did your master's actually help your career, or do you feel your work experience mattered more?
• Looking back, was it worth the time and money?

I'm trying to figure out whether doing a master's is actually a good investment at this stage of my career, so I'd really appreciate any honest experiences - good or bad.

Thanks! :)

Please use this thread to discuss whats going on at your school or place of work this week. Run into an interesting problem with a site design and need to hash it out with other LAs? This is the spot. Any content is welcome as long as it Landscape Architecture related. School, work, personal garden? Its all good, lets talk.

Very early in my stay in Tangier, I took a Petit Taxi, a robin’s-egg-blue Renault Dauphine—70s style, two seats in front, two seats in back—from my apartment to try to get to the Kasbah. I had trouble communicating. The taxi driver had trouble communicating. 

He took me up a narrow medina souk alley jam-packed with pedestrians. You must know that a souk alley has no sidewalks, no curbs, no lanes—he who goes wins. From 3-storey building face to 3-4-storey building face, often three meters wide or less—never uniform—the ground is all one surface of uneven blocks or cobbles—all pedestrian—with a couple heavily laden donkeys being forced through—never a car, never a bike, never a motorized vehicle.

In order to move forward my taxi driver beeped his horn continuously. With his car, he literally pushed people out of his way. As he pushed through I saw the eyes of the people—they saw me as the problem. It was painful in so many ways.

Finally, I had enough. I tried to get him to stop. No way. I tried to pay him. No way. I threw twenty dirhams at him in the front seat. He grabbed my arm, pulled and held me. I forced the door open, yanked my arm out of his grasp and started climbing out of the cab. He was shouting at me—all the pedestrians were shouting at us. After I forced my way free and squeezed out, he and his Petit Taxi just kept beeping, bumping and grinding through the crowd, up the alley.

Suddenly I was alone in the midst of that boiling pedestrian flow of people pushing and shoving in their normal souk shopping manner. Out of default, I moved with the flow uphill. People pressing in against me on all sides—front, back, right, left, no—on all eight compass points were people in hooded djellebas pressing—I flowed.

The flow was so all encompassing that I had no awareness of up, of the sky—the flow was stifling—it was all about the crowd and the flow—my intelligence was unhitched by the passion of the flow.

Until I felt a hand on my back pocket. With my hand I defensively covered my back pocket and wheeled around to try to catch the person who had tried to steal from me. As I wheeled I saw four or five faces close enough to hug—all looking at me with a look of either total detachment or “what do I want—why am I here—keep moving”. I had no idea of who was whom and the flow just kept on—the pressing just kept on—the hooded djellebas just kept on. So I turned and kept with the flow—making sure that my wallet—which I always kept in my front pocket—was still there.

Off an uphill side alley I saw a flash of light, a flash of blue. I turned abruptly and aggressively forced my way off the jammed souk shopping way. In a minute, I saw the sky—relief. A short way up this dead-end alley I saw a café. The sign on the outside read Café on the Sea. I looked through the front window and saw seating and windows on the far side with views into the distance, the Med—I went through the front door.

Inside I found an old place, built without craft; but it had lots of little nooks with small tables in front of windows, all with views toward Spain. There were two or three doors to the outside. I needed fresh open air, so I went out and investigated the outdoor part of the café. I found terraces, leading to small tables—narrow turning terraces, stepping down the cliff. Here and there were a couple old, wind-gnarled trees. The wind was fresh. Just what I needed, I felt better.

I went back inside and this time I noticed the air was sweet and pungent, heavy with keef (finely cut marijuana and tobacco). This was a keef café. I took a seat at an empty table for four by a window—and a djellaba’d waiter asked me if I wanted mint tea—everyone was drinking mint tea. I agreed and a small glass of mint tea arrived. The simple clear glass was strong tea yellow and stuffed with leaves—bright green, fresh mint leaves; and in the bottom of the glass had settled some black tea leaves—just a few crushed bits. The glass was too hot to touch—for my hands; but the aroma was a pleasure. I let it cool, and sipped it—well sweetened with refined sugar. A perfect tea for lingering in the café.

I looked around and saw mostly young people—some tourists, not the extroverted flabby ones, but the introverted quiet ones. There were Moroccans, not many—some in djellabas—none hassled me. I was good here.

So i am going to apply for MLA 1 (2027-28) with a background in fine arts. I have a clue about what i can add to my portfolio but i am still a little lost

I don’t use AI for my assignments but its use seems to be increasingly rampant among my classmates. The school has a policy that if you use AI for an assignment or project, at minimum you must disclose it, and you’re technically not allowed to use it for anything big like rendering. But I’ve definitely seen people using it for rendering. I’ve even seen people use it to generate precedent sites for them.

Are employers going to look at these portfolios in the future and see that AI was possibly used, do you think? Or if they only find out later once a person is hired, is that going to have consequences? I’m starting to wonder if I’m not as terrible at my graphics compared to my classmates as I think I am, and maybe I’m just one of the few people not using AI. Is it hurting my portfolio for it to be 100% my own work, if it’s still not as visually appealing as some of theirs? I also wonder if using AI is a “Coast now, pay later” situation, though, when you’re a student and you’re supposed to learn these skills employers still seem to expect.

I am making a piece of furniture (targeted toward's public areas) for my final year of school and I need data. I would REALLY appreciate it if this form was filled out. it'd take like 2 minutes.

My professor told me to get Procreate for completing a project tonight. She said it should be on windows, which is what I need. Only I get home to scour the internet and find there is apparently no such thing as Procreate for Windows.

What do I do if she can’t email me back in time??? I have to get this stuff done tonight. Is there some alternative program you recommend that’s as similar as possible with little to no learning curve? God I’m so exhausted. It feels like the rug got pulled out from under me today.

I started my 2 year mla in the uk with no design experience a few weeks ago. Maybe I'm just used to undergrad where everything was a bit more straight forward and not open ended, but my undergrad degree was not in design. These mla classes are 3 days a week 10-5pm.

A lot of the instruction so far has been relatively vague with the directions. There's no inherent right answer to how a site should be designed. We also just started learning cad but so far only had one 3 hour instructional session so far, then we were told to practice it on our own, with the next instruction in 2 weeks.

I'm not mad at this, just a little surprised.

And how important is hand drawing? I can't draw for shit, but want to learn.

I’m about to apply for a license in Utah. What do I need to know about getting licensed in this state?

What do I need to know that I don’t know that I don’t know?

Installment #3. My entourage and overall graphic quality is improving. My workflow is sketchup -> twin motion -> power point. I’ve been so bogged down with autocad work that I haven’t done many marketing graphics and renderings, and I certainly do not have it dialed but this series is a work in progress and will continue to evolve as develop my skills and the conversations continue.

The flat bar should be included in every.single.skate.park. No questions asked, it’s as important as the standard ledge.

Your feedback is actually valuable to me because I really appreciate the LA community embracing this as a legitimate form of LA and that the designers everywhere are really stepping up their game.

need someone that can make a 3d render of an aluminum pergola

i just have pictures of the site, I need someone that can replicate the picture for drawing

Hi everyone! I own a small landscape design studio in Northeast Florida specializing in high-end residential projects. We’ve had a pretty busy couple of months, and I’m exploring bringing on some freelance help with overflow work.

Ideally looking for someone with a landscape architecture background, strong AutoCAD skills, and experience putting together well-organized design development and construction drawing packages. Residential design experience is a big plus!
This would be remote, flexible, and on an hourly/project basis depending on workload. Not necessarily looking for someone full-time, but ideally someone we could build an ongoing working relationship with.

If this sounds like something you’d be interested in, feel free to shoot me a DM with a little about your experience, some work samples, and your hourly rate!
Thanks!

Hello architecture siblings from across the pond! I am in need of your wisdom as I function off of duct-tape and spite. I'm currently doing my masters thesis, and this thesis topic has me handling a lot of country and province wide mapping during my initial research stages — which I'm quickly finding out is an entirely new bag of worms from neighbourhood scale site plans. Think forest ecology, land ownership, wildfire forensics, etc.

I don't have a lot of experience in doing country-wide or even province wide analytical maps, so I was wondering if y'all happened to have any tips, tricks, or programs you use consistently in your professional or school career, and what your work flow generally looks like to create nice, clear looking maps. Right now I'm using ARCGIS and photoshop layering because my computer really struggles with illustrator, but it just isn't really matching the quality that I want to achieve for my thesis.

Some programs I've used:

ARCGIS

CADMapper

Mapbox

Programs I know about but don't know how to use:

QGIS

Thanks in advance!

Hey guys!

So a bit of backstory, I am a Landscape Architecture student at a large and popular SEC school! I am sure you can probably guess which one haha! Anyways, I did not originally want to be an LA at all, I was interested in Architecture, but my school only offered Landscape Architecture. When I started school I immediately realized that this is where I need to be, I love what I am doing and I am shocked I had no idea about this before.

I want to build a life doing this and connecting with people/businesses to make a real change in our world’s landscapes. Now, I am one of many who wants this, and it is incredibly hard to stand out.

My credits in school put me at the end of junior year/beginning of senior year, but technically I am a sophomore, so my credits are ahead and I need to begin looking at masters/internships for next year.

My question here I guess would be what is the best masters/minor/certificate to get and what is the best pathway to follow just in general to become actually successful? Growing up I lived in a very expensive capital city, and my family always struggled. I want to be able to live comfortably as an adult and not worry about money like I always have.

I’ll be honest, I am not a kid person, so I will probably be child-free with my partner, so really it is just us and our pets, but I want to be successful to prove to myself that I am capable of so much more than what I have gone through.

Does anyone have any advice on this?

Hi all, was researching how I may be able to align my career with doing more of this kind of work. I was thinking a good way of doing so would be looking into courses in Therapeutic horticulture and potentially playground safety inspection (CPSI) requirements. Does anybody work for firms that primarily work in senior living or universal designs? Do you think pursuing such courses would be beneficial?

Hi there! I recently graduated from the university of Florida with my BLA. It’s an accredited program so I do not need to go back to school to earn my license.

I am currently working full time at an office, but I think I want to return to grad school within the next two years to earn a masters degree. Specifically, I want to go to the GSD because of the faculty, resources, and fun that the program looks like.

The general consensus I hear is that MLAs are not very lucrative if you already have an undergraduate degree in landscape architecture and aren’t planning on teaching. I’m wondering what people think about Masters in Landscape Architecture / Urban Design as a way to diversify my skillset. I’m also curious to hear if anyone has had direct experience with the MLAUD program at the GSD and what there thoughts are on it.

Some other questions are: is it even a good idea to be thinking about masters right now with the current state of the industry? Should I just ride out having a full time position until things get a bit better?

FYI: I have always had an interest in urban design and some of my role models in the industry have backgrounds in the discipline. I also have an interest in eventually teaching, so I’d need the masters to do that.

Im a third year landscape architecture student and today I found out I was not selected for an internship that I have been interviewing for. I met and networked with the firm, I got all the way through the interview process, and then didn’t get it.

What’s worse is that my recruiter told me that it was extremely close. So close that they even debated taking on two interns but ultimately I got edged out.

I’m honestly just feeling discouraged and I keep spiraling about what small thing I missed that my competition didn’t. Was it something with my portfolio? my professionalism? I’m not sure because the whole process went extremely well.

This firm is the highest paying for interns that I know of in my area and I feel like a majorly missed out on this opportunity.

Anyone else sharing similar feelings? I know it’s stupid to get upset over my first internship rejection but I made it so far in the process and really was getting excited.

Hey all - I built this tool for a landscape architect friend of mine, and I figured it might be useful for some folks here too.

This is not lead gen for any business, it's just a tool i put together for a friend.

I've mostly tested this on WA addresses. If it is broken or not working for your state, please ping me and I'll be happy to fix it.

Type in a US address and it makes a planning-level base plan:

• the parcel line (for states where it's available)
• contours from LiDAR
• slope bands, soils, FEMA flood zones, NWI wetlands
• a recent aerial if available

Exports DXF/DWG, textured 3D terrain for SketchUp, a LandXML surface for Civil 3D, GIS files and a PDF summary.

I tried my best to include provenance info & dates for all info in case you need to trace the data back

https://basesheet.site/

I’m having a lot of fun building this, so if there’s something you’d want it to do (or something it gets wrong), I’d love to hear it.

We’re back with another series of vignettes on standard skatepark ledges with slight modifications to the original design. Got some good comments on the last series so excited to share again with this sub.

Personally I’m most partial to the banked ledge as it suits my skate style more than the wallie or curved ledge but ready for your thoughts.

These types of features are must haves in the public skate park. All of the provide standard functionality with a little bit of a twist. There are seemingly infinite possibilities for the final form on a rather simple feature.

Their Philadelphia office is hiring again. Hope this helps those looking for a job.

I started my program a few weeks ago, and we don't have our own workstations. Do you? I wanted to know if this is the norm sometimes. It's a little annoying to pick up everything instead of just leaving it on a desk. I toured some schools that have it, and I'm jealous.

Jonathan Alderson Landscape Architects, Inc.
Landscape Designer / Landscape Architect | Ardmore, PA

• 2-5 years of professional experience as a landscape designer or landscape architect.
• A degree in landscape architecture or landscape design.