UVA Ribas Piera School Prize Submission

The University of Virginia Department of Landscape Architecture submission was selected from graduate studios that looked at the Chesapeake Bay and the Alaskan North Slope. The landscapes are large and dynamic; they are coastal in some way, and are basically rural. These related preoccupations compose a theme of the program in the last five years. This focus springs from our geographic location in the coastal, largely rural commonwealth of Virginia together with the premise that today, large rural landscapes are most at issue.

The projects selected here are the work of groups of 3-4 students. Our core curriculum pushes students to develop their voice and articulate their values, and the semester-long collaborations these projects represent require both friction and cohesion, often through both debate and coordination of responsibilities. These are critical skills for large landscape work and help the students develop and test landscape ideas through abstraction and precision.

We have identified projects that construe landscape along a continuum of tradition and innovation. The commitment to history—of places, of ideas, and practices—has long been a preoccupation at UVA. History’s relationship to innovation forms the backbone of the best work we see around the program. Recently, this approach has developed into a portfolio of natural infrastructure concepts and new ideas on preservation and restoration of very large landscapes that are changing fast. The aim is to resolve these propositions at the level of the detail, with an interest in the tools, humans, and machines that comprise the technical approach.