Studio Classrooms

In Landscape Architecture, you’ll typically take one design studio each term. Studio courses are the core of any design degree, providing you with the opportunity to apply and test what you’ve learned in subject classes to develop and communicate solutions that fulfill and reconcile diverse and often competing priorities. We frequently offer service learning studios to engage students in solving real problems in local and regional landscapes, while working with their human constituents.

Studio courses are based in lockable studio classrooms where each student is allocated a desk or table space with a lockable cubby where you can work on all your courses for a whole term.

Urban Farm

The Urban Farm is a model for alternative urban land use where people grow food, work together, take care of the land, and build community. Since its inception in 1976 as part of the Department of Landscape Architecture, the two-acre Urban Farm has been a place and a process that integrates biological, ecological, economic, and social concerns. With renewed recognition of the importance of food issues, and as landscape architects embrace the role of food production, in shaping places, the Urban Farm stands as a testament to the department’s long-standing commitment to sustainability and its focus on modeling solutions.

Most recently, the Urban Farm has been expanded to include additional growing spaces in partnership with the University’s long-term planning goals, including a ¾-acre site on the eastern edge of campus installed to allow more students to participate in providing a vibrant neighborhood amenity.

Students at the Urban Farm come from virtually every discipline across the UO to learn about where their food comes from and how food choices influence change. We begin with our hands in the soil and learn to recognize that we are all part of the robust local agrarian community that defines Eugene's foodshed. Along the way, we create and nurture relationships with like-minded community programs, offering guidance and hands-on assistance. Groups such as the Willamette Farm and Food Coalition, FOOD for Lane County, Huerto de la Familia, The School Garden Project of Lane County and many others have relied on Urban Farm students for this help and guidance. In addition, students are introduced to local farmers and food processors so that they can develop a "food literacy" that emerges from the hands-on, interactive experience.

The course LA 390 Urban Farm is open to all students at the UO and can be repeated for a multi-seasonal experience. The course also qualifies for credit within the new Food Studies program, either as part of an undergraduate minor degree or toward a graduate specialization. More information is available in the UO catalog, on the Urban Farm blog, or by contacting the Urban Farm Director.