Become A Landscape Architect

Exploring Landscape Architecture Through The Digital Lens of Minecraft

 

 Winning design created by high school students from the Design and Architecture Senior High School (DASH) in Miami, Florida. Photo provided by: Park University

“Landscape architecture so often starts with drawings on papers and can evolve into modeling. I found that Minecraft is a hybrid of those two ideas; it’s abstract enough to communicate ideas and forms, but refined enough to develop and create entire worlds.” Jeff Holzer, ASLA, Mentor, Minecraft Design Competition   

In June 2021, ASLA launched its first virtual design event, a competition for high school students using Minecraft, a popular game played by millions of youth and adult gamers around the world.

Developed by Mojang, Minecraft is an open world game where players collaborate to design and break apart a variety of blocks in three-dimensional worlds to create community spaces and structures. Microsoft recognized the educational potential of the game and launched a Minecraft: Education Edition that is now used globally through Discovery Education.  

ASLA’s first virtual design event, a competition, brought together a diverse range of students from Washington, DC, Miami, FL and New York, NY. 

View the photo gallery of winning designs by DASH students.   

 In June 2022, ASLA launched Minecraft Design Camps in Washington, DC and Sacramento, CA.

    

  Student design teams led by Skip Mezger, ASLA in Sacramento, CA

Read more testimonies from ASLA Mentors after DREAM BIG with Minecraft Design Events 2021-2022

• “The students were excited, ambitious, competitive, and wonderfully skilled at the game, so from a mentor role, they made my job very easy.  As we went through the process to determine a design, I would speak at a high level of design, and they understood it and how to apply it in the game.  They taught me just as much as I was teaching them.  We were able to utilize each of our knowledge bases to create a really cool finished project.” 

• “You never know what skills the next generation of students will bring, so perhaps there is an opportunity to harness their skills with popular games like Minecraft and apply them to the work of landscape architecture.”  

• “Being creative can take so many forms, it doesn’t need to be traditional forms like painting or sculpting. Untraditional mediums like Minecraft can be inspiring tools for kids to be expressive and creative, and with continued fostering could be directed into academics or a career like landscape architecture.”

• “I got to see first-hand how Minecraft parallels real life landscape architectural practices. The design competition gave these students a leg up on other students interested in a design career.”

• “The Minecraft Design Competition allowed students to think like a landscape architect and produce a design and graphics, just like a landscape architect!”

• “The student’s park designs exceeded my expectations!”

ASLA members can access the new DREAM BIG with Minecraft Design Event Guide by clicking here.

Please direct questions about DREAM BIG with Minecraft activities and other Career Discovery resources to Lisa J. Jennings, Senior Manager, Career Discovery and Diversity at ljennings@asla.org.