What you will study
All design projects are developed as part of a personal portfolio that can be immediately used to target employment. Projects reflect critical challenges and opportunities of contemporary landscape practice including green and blue infrastructures, resilient and adaptive strategies, detailed design of places for people, planting, biodiversity, transformation and change through time. Workshops include: model making (in the Faculty's 3D workshop), mapping, drawing, digital media, materials and construction.
Our London location, established local, European and international networks, and Landscape Interface Studio provide the focus for contemporary landscape design projects that address immediate and long-term landscape solutions for cities and their regions.
Modules
The course begins with a series of intensive workshops with expert practitioners for rapid assimilation and application of key landscape architecture skills, techniques and knowledge.
The course includes study visits and opportunities to collaborate on live projects with client and community engagement.
Summer work experience and a critical case study engage students with an immediate context of practice and the opportunity for dialogue with practitioners in relation to projects on site.
Core modules
Landscape Architecture: Primer
60 credits
A Landscape Architect synthesises a complex range of issues, design aspirations and inspirations to produce projects which strategically engage individuals, communities and society with place in practical, personal, cultural and political ways. The material practice of landscape architecture responds to and engages with the dynamic, constantly changing conditions of the living world. Representations of landscape both construct its meaning and are fundamental to the processes of its design; a range of representational techniques underpin the act of design and the communication of proposals.
This module recognises the breadth of knowledge and skills and the range of experiences of the student group, and extends these to provide the necessary foundation for landscape architecture studies. The module supports students in developing shared learning alongside individual development, experimentation and expression, appropriate to the needs of each student. The module primes students to undertake practices of landscape architecture through a series of workshop-lab exercises led by specialist practitioners, concluding with the production of a Landscape Architecture Primer document which will underpin the work throughout the course.
Landscape Architecture: Portfolio
60 credits
Through a process of primary and secondary research across a broad range of subjects, Landscape architects appraise the fundamental conditions of site and context, in order to inform a strategic design approach for a particular place. Landscape architecture interprets and transforms the interactions and inter-relationships between a diverse range of physical, environmental, social and cultural factors. The successful integration of professional and technical issues within a developing design process is fundamental to landscape architecture; this process of synthesis requires sensibility, critical self-reflection, iteration and team work.
The module targets the delivery of a creative Landscape Architecture portfolio of design projects that explore the identification of factors of local distinctiveness, and demonstrate the momentum and achievement of the first phase of the Landscape programme. This provides a platform for the critical case study and possible direction for summer work experience, and defines the trajectory of the second year of study.
Landscape Architecture Professional Practice: Design & Making
30 credits
Good design successfully integrates ethical, regulatory, financial and professional conditions within a material practice. These elements are integral to a creative process and the development of a coherent, successful landscape architecture proposition.
The profession of landscape architecture sits in a context of interdisciplinary production and delivery, and is subject to code/s of conduct and professional body requirements. Landscape architecture professionals engage in an aesthetic, pragmatic and ethical use of materials, construction and aftercare, employing techniques for resilience, adaptation, and green and blue infrastructures.
The module supports the Landscape Architecture Thesis Project process and ethos of design project development, making and resolution, within UK and international contexts of professional practice.
Landscape Architecture: Reading, Research and Narrative
30 credits
Landscape architecture and urbanism is shaped by historical, contemporary, and visionary seminal ideas. Narratives of landscape architecture relate to temporal and spatial scales of practice: development, regeneration, infrastructure and responsibility, from the small local scale to the city, its region and international context.
This module focus brings together the consideration of theory, research and narrative, in the context of the practice and communication of landscape architecture. The module supports students' engagement in research processes and enables them to apply a critical knowledge of the concept and theory of research methodologies, to further develop a theoretical grounding and literacy in landscape architecture, and to support research-informed design practice.
Landscape Architecture: Thesis Project
60 credits
The development of a research design thesis reflects individual ambition, curiosity and creativity, in this expanding field of practice, and seeks to test relationships between Landscape practice and related co-professional activity, benchmark projects and measurable ‘values'. The thesis project requires that sophisticated thinking, clearly articulated strategies and analytical research techniques are applied to the synthesis of ideas, development and resolution of a project.
This module is the ‘capstone project' and the culmination of a student's educational experience of the MLA programme. It offers the opportunity for students to articulate their developing position as landscape architects and professionals. Within this module students can refine an interest and ambition emerging from study within preceding modules and prior experience, and articulate a specific expertise or focus within the scope of the profession.
The project will be presented and curated in a format for digital publication or exhibition appropriate to the theme and anticipated audience. Students are encouraged to define aspirational agendas that address current challenges: economic, environmental and social, and define appropriate goals in this dynamic field of practice. The digital publication or exhibition will be the edited and outward facing expression of the thesis project, supported by the thesis project portfolio in the context of this module.
