News + Events

The Industrial Design is celebrating 25 years as a degree offering program on the campus of Virginia Tech. Catch us at the International Design Conference hosted by the Industrial Designer’s Society of America in New York City this August.  Save the date! On Friday, August 25th from 6-8pm come join Dean Liu and AAD for a reception to meet and mingle. Registration info to come soon. Graduates can also visit the campus for our bi-annual alumni reunion in the spring of 2024 held in Blacksburg. 

The Landscape Architecture Program is preparing to celebrate 50 years of graduates in 2024. We are beginning the celebrations a bit early and will keep things going through 2024.  Save the date for a celebratory reception in Blacksburg on Friday, October 20th followed by a day-long Landscape Architecture First Symposium on Saturday, October 21st. The Symposium is a collaboration with the Virginia Chapter of the  American Society of Landscape Architects (VA ASLA). Come to Blacksburg and connect with other landscape architects, earn a few CEUs, and meet the newest faculty and students in the Landscape Architecture Program. Register for the reception here. Register for the Symposium here. 

The School of Design Health and Wellness Symposium is an opportunity to hear experts in our field share their research and design projects focusing on whole health wellness for society through the built environment. Events include keynote speakers, panel discussions, and work shared by our faculty and students. The event is for the broader university audience and practicing designers.

Landscape Architecture, Industrial Design, Interior Design and Business students are traveling a transect through Western Europe, exploring site design, product design and manufacture, and marketing. Students spend their days studying the design of built places and things, observing cultural and social practices. Evening seminars use discussions of individual sketchbooks, and conversation about discovered curiosities, and challenges to bring focus on the relationships between people, places, and culture.

LAR 4014/5015G landscape architecture students worked with students, faculty and staff in the College of Natural Resources and the Environment and the Division of Campus Planning, Infrastructure, and Facilities to develop site designs around Cheatham Hall that would facilitate social interactions and community building for the college. CNRE Dean Paul Winistorfer invited students to rethink the grounds and propose outdoor space improvements that would provide spaces to meet, hold outdoor classes, and relax. Plans incorporated existing alumni and legacy trees, places for small gatherings and larger areas for college-wide events. This community engagement project resulted in 11 approaches improving the main entry and front courtyard, 11 alternatives for the north lawn, and 22 for the green space between Cheatham and Deitrick Halls.

The LAR 2016/4706 studio focused on site-scale design, tying together and experimenting with the design of topography, water systems, vegetation, structures, materials, movement, and activities. In the first 6 weeks students were introduced to fieldwork methods and techniques, investigative representation modalities, and designing at a scale beyond the domestic or everyday. During the second half of the semester, students tackled what to do with a hole in the ground, speculating on futures for the Virginia Tech Quarry as the Hokie Stone mining is played out.

Over two semesters, fifth year BLA students identified contemporary challenges to the design of our built environment for exploration. In each individual research project, students developed integrated design solutions that reimagined ways to address climate change, sea level rise, phytoremediation of disaster and former industrial sites, post frack sand mined landscapes and environmental education. Others addressed urban burial practices, neighborhood redevelopment, open space design for teenagers, and design of therapeutic landscapes for people at risk.