Already have a design degree? | The Conway School

If you already have a professional degree in landscape architecture, architecture, or another design field, Conway may be just the right place to spend a year on your way to a “greener,” more experience-based design practice.

Since most of the learning at Conway is structured around work on real projects for real clients, you’ll finish the ten-month program with very practical design experience at a range of project scales. If your existing degree is in architecture you’ll gain a profound sense of land and landscape and their relationships to buildings.

International students who would like to spend a year in the United States and who already have a professional degree from their home country will find at Conway a vibrant opportunity to experience professional design in America.

Mexican architect Malena Maiz '11 (left) got a degree from Conway because, as she put it, “I wanted to capture the importance of the land in relation to the built environment, in order to enhance my ecological perspective and make projects more sustainable."

During the 2010-11 school year, Mexican architect Malena Maiz did just this. She already had a bachelors degree in architecture from a Mexican university and a masters degree in sustainable architecture from the Polytechnic University of Catalunya, Spain.

During her year at Conway, Malena developed a site master plan for a girl’s school of rock and roll, helped plan a network of public parks in an economically challenged urban neighborhood, and developed a sustainability strategy for a major arterial street (Avenida Jose Vasconcelos) back in her home city.

Malena’s final project, in her hometown near Monterrey, Mexico, helped her develop professional design and planning connections in her home country.

Before coming to Conway, Kent Freed ’91 was a young licensed architect working at a large multi-disciplinary firm in Kansas City. He considered attending a traditional landscape architecture program. But, the deciding point “was just the personal ‘fit’ that I felt with the Conway faculty and program over the hierarchy and theoretical approach at [the more traditional program]. Conway was definitely the better fit for adding a site planning and landscape emphasis to my career as an architect.”

Programs of study for applicants who are admitted with advanced design experience are adjusted based on the individual needs of the student and there may be opportunities for you to help with instruction.