Alabama Lab

Alabama Lab is the design research lab of the Auburn University landscape architecture program. 

The Lab is grounded in Alabama. We focus our work on landscape issues that our state is facing, particularly urban industrial legacies, rural land use, and coastal resilience. Our work does not stop at the state line, though: we believe that these issues resonate with communities across the southeast and beyond. 

Alabama Lab shares the beliefs, methods, attitudes, issues, and places that characterize the MLA program. First and foremost, Alabama Lab is committed to design as a methodology for doing work that addresses issues that matter. We believe in the value of design as a way of engaging rich, complex, and messy situations — in order to imagine and build better futures. 

The Lab allows students to engage directly with outside communities, partners, and collaborators. Students who participate in the Lab join long-term initiatives, projects whose scope goes well beyond a single year of study. Through the Lab, faculty and students together amplify the impact of work done in the landscape architecture program. The School of Architecture, Planning, and Landscape Architecture has a long and internationally-acclaimed history of showing that education and real-world impact can and should co-exist, through programs like Rural Studio (Newbern, AL) and Urban Studio (Birmingham, AL). Alabama Lab extends that tradition.