Master of Urban Design

With a mission-driven interdisciplinary group of faculty rooted in the Departments of Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Urban and Environmental Planning, and Architectural History, our Urban Design curriculum addresses the most pressing social, environmental, and spatial challenges confronting society in the 21st century — challenges such as climate change and environmental degradation, demographic shifts and racial injustices, as well as technological transformations.

Through our collaborations, integrated with the School's Next Cities Institute, these challenges are addressed through radical concepts and transformative methodologies that allow us to not only envision more sustainable future cities, but to shape new practices that constitute the dynamic conditions of the urban. Our work engages the ways in which complex, often competing, forces come together in the spatial structure of the city. Spatial literacy and active participation are critical to recognizing that the spaces of urbanism are spaces of citizenry — where struggles and potentials collide and where we, collectively, enact our capacities to make a better world for all.

Embracing an interdisciplinary and multi-scalar approach, and utilizing applied design research and theoretical investigations, our cross-departmental Urban Design curriculum is committed to the education of the next generation of design leaders and change-makers. In examining a multiplicity of scales and diverse spatial conditions of urbanity, from public space to private development, and from the social to the ecological, we help designers and planners to become critical thinkers and strategic agents in support of urban sustainability, social justice, and environmental resilience.

Creating more just, sustainable, and healthy futures

We are living in a critical moment in human history. Our world is faced with significant challenges such as climate change, racial and ethnic injustices, environmental degradation, and health inequities. The UVA School of Architecture with its four departments— Architecture, Architectural History, Landscape Architecture, and Urban and Environmental Planning is well-positioned to address these complex issues, to make meaningful strides in design innovation, and to contribute to the making of a better world.

Our faculty and staff are leading the way in driving positive change through their research, teaching, service, and creative practice. They are working collaboratively across our respective design disciplines and beyond to create new knowledge, to transform design practices, and to support our collective educational mission. Our students come from all corners of the world and are intellectually curious, understand the importance of combining both theory and practice, and are committed to the public good. Our graduates are leaders in the design practices working across multiple scales, across diverse geographies, and within the public, private, and nonprofit sectors.

Together, the UVA School of Architecture community— faculty, staff, students, and alumni understand the significance of the current time and the capacity of our disciplines. Together, we are rising to the occasion by creating more just, sustainable, and healthy societies.

Our Jedi Initiative

The UVA School of Architecture is committed to cultivating democracy and to the sustained, critical rethinking of our institutional policies, practices and structures. We recognize our own privileges as an institution, and we honor the consequential responsibilities to move our society towards an inclusive future that recognizes and serves all people, regardless of gender, race, sexuality, nationality, citizenship status, ability, or socioeconomic standing. We have inherited the structures of power and inequity that have shaped the University of Virginia, in the past and in the present. As an educational community, and at this historical moment in human history, we commit ourselves to the sustained, critical rethinking of our institutional policies, practices, structures, and culture. The School of Architecture’s Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) Initiative articulates and guides our collective commitment (as leadership, faculty, staff, and students) to building, promoting and sustaining a culture of justice, equity, diversity and inclusion within and beyond the University.