University of Virginia School of Architecture

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.