Description

The Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Virginia School of Architecture welcomes applications for an open rank visiting professorship. We seek exceptional candidates with a transformative vision for landscape design, articulated through a robust and award-winning portfolio of built projects, research, or scholarship that demonstrates design excellence and innovation—such as in relation to plants and living systems, site and material assembly, or landscapes and communities undergoing significant shifts. The successful applicant is expected to bring a strong pedagogical approach that integrates design leadership within the department with innovative research rooted in professional or academic practice.

Full-time and partial appointments will be considered in order to encourage innovative practitioners and academics looking to develop a meaningful design-driven agenda and contribution at UVA alongside their current commitment. Faculty rank will be determined based on candidate’s qualifications and experience.

We expect the candidate to share the Department of Landscape Architecture’s mission to educate and inspire the next generation of landscape architecture leaders. Designing landscape is a powerful way of asking meaningful questions, convening diverse voices, and giving form to shared cultural aspirations in places that matter deeply at the societal level. In light of this, our department advances innovative ideas, critical perspectives, synthetic frameworks, and new techniques to address the multifaceted challenges of our time through the act of design, and across a broad range of contexts and scales. We emphasize the integration of ecological systems, social and environmental resilience, responsible technologies, artistic expressions and creativity in the development of methods and processes in design. As a vital member of the School of Architecture’s multidisciplinary community, the successful candidate will contribute to amplifying these aims through excellence in teaching, design, and research, in close collaboration with our faculty and students.

This visiting professorship offers a rare opportunity to develop research and pedagogical initiatives to advance and expand their current work, also in dialogue with established efforts within and across the departments at the School of Architecture, including the Adaptive Environments Lab, Arctic Design Group, Center for Cultural Landscapes, and Natural Infrastructure Lab, as well as the Morven Sustainability Lab—a 2,913 acre place-based living laboratory.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications:

• Applicants must have a Master in Landscape Architecture (MLA) or a graduate degree in a related field, such as a Master of Architecture (MArch).
• Applicants should have a record of excellence in teaching, and design-based research or creative and professional practice in landscape architecture.
• Applicants should have demonstrated strengths in site design, material assembly, planting design, construction, public space design, and its relation to ecological and cultural systems.

Application Instructions

Qualified applicants should submit: (1) a cover letter stating their intent and interest in the position, (2) a Curriculum Vitae, (3) examples of student work, and (4) a portfolio or link to a professional webpage of creative work or research.

Application reviews will begin April 1 and will continue to remain open until the position is filled. The anticipated starting date for this position is January 7, 2027, or as negotiated. The successful candidate will be expected to be in residence in Charlottesville, Virginia on a semester basis. For questions regarding this position, please contact Search Committee Chair Brian Davis, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture brd6eq@virginia.edu.