Course summary

Our research profile includes the following areas which fall into two broad categories: Inclusive access to outdoor environments led by the OPENspace research centre:

• Exploration of how public open space, urban parks and squares, forests, green and blue spaces and rural areas can contribute to quality of life. Our work includes a focus on the benefits to be gained from getting outdoors and the barriers currently experienced by different users, particularly those from disadvantaged groups.

• Landscape design and planning to support young children, teenagers, older people, and other age groups and sectors within the population.

• Research on salutogenic environments (the health-enhancing qualities of engagement with certain types of landscape) and on discerning the mechanisms behind any links between wellbeing and the natural environment.

• Environmental perception, including empirical research on the transactional nature of people’s engagement with place.

• Landscape architecture as a force in urban planning including the application of landscape character assessment, the dynamics of peri-urban areas and future landscape scenarios.

• Innovative, practice-led design research, especially involving collaborations with artists and designers from disciplines outside landscape architecture.

• Cultural landscapes and the understanding the relationship of people through their lives to specific landscapes, including the role of memories and associations with contested landscapes.

• The history and theory of landscape architecture, including development of the public role of the landscape architect in the 19th and 20th centuries.