INLAND

Launch your career in landscape architecture this summer! The INLAND cohort of the Summer Institutes is an intensive landscape architecture summer program—a rigorous, six-week, graduate-level introduction to the foundational principles and practices of the discipline. 

This post-baccalaureate landscape architecture summer course is designed for individuals holding an undergraduate degree in any field who are considering advanced study or a professional career transition into landscape architecture. 

You’ll have the opportunity to build a quality portfolio for graduate school or wherever the next step of your professional development takes you. Previous design experience is welcome but NOT required.

As an INLAND student, you’ll experience a graduate-level landscape architecture summer studio and learn the fundamentals of landscape architectural practice through research, making, and experimentation. In a collaborative summer studio environment, you’ll engage with the concepts of ecology, public space, community, and sustainability as they relate to landscape design across multiple scales.

You and your peers will share the energy, creativity, and labor of the landscape architecture studio environment, where you will spend most of your time. In a supportive community, you’ll master new skills, talk through your ideas, and share tips and resources. Constructive reviews—casual discussions with other students, desk reviews with instructors, formal reviews with invited expert guests—will help you develop and refine your own critical perspective on your own work and the discipline.

This immersive landscape architecture summer workshop explores relationships among human presence, ecology, and landscape design. Landscapes are borne of processes; we show you how to analyze these changes through iteration, observation, research, imagination, and graphic communication. You will learn to observe, represent, and engage with landscape as infrastructure and an interconnected socio-ecological system.

In INLAND, you’ll develop your ideas through rigorous investigation, immersing yourself in a creative and analytical process of making that moves you closer to understanding the possibilities of a site. Throughout this intensive landscape architecture summer program you will participate in many activities: fieldwork and site visits, lectures and guest lectures, readings and discussions, company visits, design tool workshops, and studio.

You’ll be introduced to the design tools of landscape architecture, learning how to read and create landscape architectural drawings, including plans, sections, elevations, and perspectives. You’ll have opportunities to experiment with various mediums to respond to the interconnections of climate, culture, material, and the site.

You’ll graduate from INLAND with the essential skills and tools of the landscape architecture profession, including: 

Upon successful completion of UC Berkeley’s established landscape architecture summer program, you will have developed a high-quality design portfolio that will position you favorably for admission to Master of Landscape Architecture (MLA) and similar programs. You can also expect to have much more clarity about your future career and your next steps of your career journey. In addition, you will possess essential technical and conceptual skills that are useful for professional practice.

Check out the other Summer Institute cohorts:

Still have questions? Read more about Applications & Admissions, Program Cost & Financial Support, Course Credit, How to Prepare, Housing & Transportation, Cancellation & Withdrawal, After the Program on the Summer Programs FAQ page.