Landscape Architecture (MLA)

at University of Edinburgh

This programme is professionally accredited by the Landscape Institute and provides students with professionally focused landscape architectural skills and a critical awareness of the context of contemporary landscape architecture practice. This is the only professionally orientated postgraduate programme in landscape architecture in Scotland, and it has an acknowledged international reputation.

Landscape architecture combines creative practice with intellectual rigour in the invention of landscapes for human occupation. Working across a range of scales, from the territory to the garden, it is a practice that draws on a deep understanding of material and cultural history, ecology, geography, climate, and the past and present uses of landscapes in order to speculate on the future.

The MLA programme at the University of Edinburgh invites applications from graduates with distinctive disciplinary interests, including landscape architecture, art and design, ecology, architecture and construction, horticulture, geography, or others.

The programme endeavours to train individual practitioners with distinct modes of practice and fields of interest with the aim that MLA graduates enter the profession with a sophisticated portfolio of skills, knowledge and understanding.

Design teaching within the MLA programme is research-led. Colleagues within ESALA maintain active design practices through commission, competition and publication; they are engaged in practice and research at local, national and international levels.

The programme benefits from the studio-based learning typical of an art-college environment. Design, theory and techniques courses are delivered from within ESALA and from the wider ECA and University community.

Selected components of teaching and learning activities are taught at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh.

The MLA satisfies the Landscape Institutes’ professional requirements and enables graduates to commence a period of relevant employment leading to the Institute’s Pathway to Chartership Examination.