MA Landscape Architecture Studies (Online)

MA Landscape Architecture Studies (Online) is a two-year, part-time course designed to provide a broad foundation of critical knowledge and skills for students with a passion for landscape. The course is designed for students from a wide variety of backgrounds around the world wishing to build on their current subject knowledge, or to transfer from related subject areas.

Taught by practising landscape architects, urbanists and academics, the course offers an in-depth perspective on what's an increasingly important and growing field at the forefront of many of the most critical regional and global issues, including environmental sustainability, human wellbeing and resilience.

The units within this course have been crafted to help you contextualise your current or future landscape design practice within a wider framework of interconnected systems. With support from our experienced academics, you’ll get to explore the benefits that this dynamic approach could bring to both your career, and to wider social, economic and environmental needs.

This introductory unit will familiarise you with key themes and practices in landscape architecture. You’ll also use this time to think about and articulate your own learning needs and interests, and then identify your goals and hopes for the course to guide your studies.

In this unit, we’ll go over important ideas and theories relating to the meaning of landscape from social, cultural, environmental and ethical perspectives. You’ll also expand your understanding of architecture’s theoretical foundations in fields such as geography, ecology, sociology and art.

We’ll look at cultural traditions and philosophies in the context of current existential crises regarding landscape value. You’ll learn about how current practice is influenced by past and present social formations, and examine philosophical, spiritual, aesthetic and practical relationships to landscapes.

This focuses on the complex and conflicting relationships, systems and processes in both built and natural landscapes. It draws upon a range of innovative landscape approaches, including green-blue infrastructure planning, cradle to cradle design, and natural capital accounting.

We’ll critically evaluate how landscape can help promote physical and mental health by addressing sources of economic, social and environmental stress. You’ll also learn how diversity, environmental justice and inclusivity relate to you and your practice, as well as their wider social context.

This unit covers how landscape architecture practice can support social justice and community through design and innovation in tools and techniques. We’ll explore equitable placemaking design and management, discussing topics such as public transportation, accessibility and more.

Your lessons for this unit will help you consider how the practice of landscape design and our conceptual understanding of landscape is historically grounded in the context of gardens. You’ll study garden design precedents from across a range of typologies, scales and cultural contexts.

As its title suggests, this unit is an introduction to urban design as a discipline. We’ll cover its language, terminology and examples of recent urban planning – and examine the nature of cities as landscapes and ecosystems from the perspectives of contemporary and historical urban theorists.

During this unit, you’ll gain a theoretical and practical grounding in research and research design methods. The unit serves as a foundation to the Comprehensive Master’s Project and is your opportunity to identify and test your area of research, key sources and methods of inquiry.

The Comprehensive Master’s Project is your time to showcase your position and approach as a landscape professional. With the support of a project supervisor, you’ll be challenged to create a design project that synthesises the ideas, knowledge and skills you’ve developed during the course.