Master of Landscape Architecture Program 50th Anniversary

We are proud to call the legendary John A. Russell Building home. Inspired by the Bauhaus, its architectural beauty creates an excellent learning and teaching place. The two-story open courtyard brings natural light into the heart of the building, the main offices and the studio spaces. The building has undergone several renovations and updates to serve the digital era's needs without losing its architectonic identity and spatial quality. We dream of exterior test sites close by.

We are fortunate to have excellent labs and workshops within the Faculty of Architecture. The Workshop, FABLab, CADLab, Centre for Architectural Structures and Technology (C.A.S.T.), and the Architecture/Fine Arts Library are superb research facilities with up-to-date and comprehensive technological equipment (digital and analogue). We seek to strengthen their use through collaboration with partners from the industry. Tour our Facilities

We benefit from a very motivated and engaged student body. Annual student-led initiatives have effectively evoked numerous memorable events in the life of students and teachers through extra-curricular activities. Most of our students are from prairie provinces, while international students add a valuable dimension. We promote student and leadership diversity that reflects society. Also, our faculty-wide PhD program in Design and Planning is constantly growing.

The department’s faculty represents a balanced mix of mostly full-time professors from a wide range of academic, professional and geographic backgrounds. We care about students, sustainable ideas, and big targets and consider ourselves creative leaders and trustworthy partners. Through internationally recognized scholarly and creative work, faculty members advance the science, art and profession of landscape architecture. With upcoming retirements and sufficient financial funds, we wish to continue attracting instructors who have achieved recognition in design practice while keeping the current research potential of our department alive.

Project-based learning is a specific characteristic of design education, and we consider the Design Studio as the opportunity for synthesizing knowledge with action and learning by doing. We provide a stimulating studio atmosphere and sufficient time to work on designs. We believe that an essential part of design education is the confrontation with complex assignments at various scales; this fosters a basic understanding of multiple interactions of all aspects of a system.  We aim to maintain a 1:15 teacher-student ratio in our design studios.

We are administratively located in a distinct Faculty with all four key environmental design and planning disciplines (Architecture, City Planning, Interior Design, and Landscape Architecture). There are overlaps between the disciplines, and we are re-discovering our common ground. For instance, GIS mapping and analysis, Research Methods, and Principles of Urban Design are areas where sharing resources and developing joint strategies offer a great deal for teaching and research.

Winnipeg has the largest urban population of Indigenous peoples in the country. The University of Manitoba has Canada's second-oldest Native Studies program (est. 1974). With the 2015 opening of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR), the university has become a centre of excellence in Indigenous education. Creating pathways to Indigenous achievement is one of the university’s five priorities in its 2015-2020 Strategic Plan: Taking our Place. In 2018, Shawn Bailey joined the Faculty as an assistant professor and Indigenous scholar. In Fall 2019, the Indigenous Design and Planning Student Association (IDPSA) was founded in the Faculty. Various design studios and courses of the MLA program have cultivated Indigenous awareness and knowledge, and Faculty-wide initiatives are underway to increase Indigenous student enrolment.

We are fortunate to be supported by a capable administrative and technical staff team. They manage and monitor the Faculty’s assets and provide creative services to students and teachers. With the support and the help of the Faculty’s Partners Program, we can invite and attract excellent speakers. Our speaker series is superb, and we will continue with these opportunities to stay in touch with the world beyond the Prairies.

Our program is affordable, and Winnipeg is an affordable city. Due to the favourable combination of price and quality, our landscape architecture program has appealed nationally and internationally.

Graduates from our MLA program find jobs in the private or public sector and become registered professionals of the Canadian Society of Landscape Architects and members of other professional organisations. Some MLA graduates undertake doctoral studies and/or hold faculty positions in Canada and other parts of the world.

The following chronology describes the evolution of the current structure of the Faculty of Architecture (entries in bold italics refer to events specific to the landscape architecture program):

1933    First postgraduate instruction in architecture was instituted with the degree of Master of Science in Architecture
1935    Graduate degree was changed to Master of Architecture
1938    Three-year diploma program in Interior Decoration was established to meet the growing demand for training in this professional field
1945    Departments of Architecture and Interior Decoration were combined under the name School of Architecture and Fine Arts
1948    Entire school was reorganized under the name School of Architecture, and both undergraduate curricula were revised. Architecture became a five-year program, and a new four-year program leading to the degree of Bachelor of Interior Design replaced the former three-year diploma program
1949    One-year graduate program in Community Planning, open to graduates in Architecture or Civil Engineering, was established
1957    Manitoba Legislature approved a capital grant for the construction of a building for the School of Architecture, the first in Canada to be designed for the exclusive use of a School of Architecture
1963    The School was reconstituted as the Faculty of Architecture with two departments of undergraduate study – Architecture and Interior Design. Authorization was also given for the reorganization of the post graduate program in Community Planning into a two-year post graduate program leading to the degree Master of City Planning
1966    Senate authorized the reorganization of the curriculum in Architecture to include a three-year program leading to the degree of Bachelor of Environmental Studies as a prerequisite to one of:
a) a three-year program leading to the degree of Bachelor of Architecture,
b) a two-year program leading to the degree of Bachelor of Landscape Architecture (which did not actually enroll any students and was superseded by the Master of Landscape Architecture degree in 1970)   
1970    Senate approved a new curriculum leading to the first professional degree Master of Architecture, which replaced the three-year Bachelor of Architecture program
1972    Senate approved a new curriculum leading to the degree of Master of Landscape Architecture, which replaced the original Bachelor of Landscape Architecture program
1992    Senate approved a name change from Department of Environmental Studies to Department of Environmental Design
1994    Senate approved a new curriculum leading to a post-professional degree Master of Interior Design, a research-based degree building upon the first professional Bachelor of Interior Design degree
1998    Senate approved the Faculty of Architecture Reorganization Plan, which established the program in Environmental Design as the undergraduate foundation for the graduate Departments of Architecture, City Planning, Interior Design and Landscape Architecture
1998    Senate approved the creation of University 1
1999    Senate approved the establishment of the professional Master of Interior Design program leading to phasing-out of the Bachelor of Interior Design program  
2005    Senate approved the PhD in Design and PhD in Planning
2007-2008    Senate approved restructuring of the Bachelor of Environmental Design program
2009-2010 First cohort graduating from the restructured Environmental Design program
2013    First graduate from the restructured Master of Landscape Architecture program

MLA Alumni List (1976-2022)