Graduate Program in Sustainable Landscape Planning and Design

The Conway program is a lively mix of classroom instruction, applied studio work, student and visitor presentations, fieldwork, site visits, and informal discussions in the collective kitchen.

Sketching in the field

Students learn from faculty, from each other, from guests, and from their explorations of their project sites and the communities where those projects are embedded. The environment is personal, collaborative, and rigorous—learning is driven by motivated students working for real communities to solve real and pressing problems.

The Conway program is built around those real projects for real clients. The projects raise issues, questions, and challenges—from technical questions about site engineering, to ethical issues about community involvement or wise use of resources, to practical questions about how resilience can be built into systems in the face of uncertain futures—that drive the classes, discussions, and field and studio work that make up the rest of the fully integrated, multidisciplinary program. Class assignments—graphic, technical, and written—support project work.

A Typical Week at Conway

We’re small. That means we can change the schedule on a moment’s notice–load up the van and go on a field trip to see what happens when a dam collapses; visit a project site during a community street festival; add a class to introduce new software that suddenly became available.

We do, though, have a regular weekly schedule.

Projects

Each Conway student works on three projects, one per term. In the fall, students have their own site design project, typically a couple of acres or less—one student siting a new home on an undeveloped site, adapting a built site to new owners or uses, designing an educational center or market garden for a small farm, or working on a pocket park or small land trust property.

Through this first project, students learn the basics of the design process: site reconnaissance and assessment, defining/refining the project goals and client needs, and exploring solutions that work with the natural systems on site.

Small teams of students work on—and are responsible for managing—winter and spring projects. Winter projects are larger land use planning projects, such as a food security plan for a town or region, a management plan for a land trust property or regional park, a campus master plan, or a farmland preservation strategy.

Spring projects are also at the community scale, but with greater detail, such as a streetscape design, a park or recreational facility, or a restoration plan for a former industrial site.

Students also learn from their regular exposure to other student projects—30 to 35 different projects at three distinct scales. All are real projects for real clients. Students are also exposed in this way to potential employers in land trusts, town, and regional planning departments, community organizations, and non-profit agencies.

Classes

Classes in design theory, graphics, computer skills (such as InDesign and GIS), site engineering, and humanities support and draw from students’ experiences in the projects.

Student Presentations

Students give weekly presentations to faculty and classmates, becoming more and more comfortable articulating the narrative of their projects and making compelling arguments for particular design and planning solutions.

Near the end of each term, students give formal presentations before a jury of three outside professionals—experienced designers, planners, and ecologists—who offer advice that students can then incorporate in the last two weeks of the term.

Studio

Faculty goes from desk to desk on studio days for individual and team consultation. After the faculty goes home, students continue to learn in the studio from each other.

Visitors

At least once a week, an outside expert in a relevant topic–for example, environmental law, green building design, wildlife habitat, or environmental justice–gives a lecture at the school. They often stay for the group meal that follows, and sometimes spend time in the studio to talk with students about projects.

Field Work

The weekends with a trip in the van–to a constructed wetlands, a regional planning office, a quaking bog, an innovative parking lot–or with field work, to learn about stonework, green roof construction, or pond building.