Course summary

If you don't have a degree in Landscape Architecture, this MLA in Landscape Architecture with a conversion year offers an opportunity to take the first steps in becoming a Chartered member of the Landscape Institute (note: If you do hold a degree in Landscape Architecture then please view our one-year MA in Landscape Architecture option). This two year course has two stages. Stage one covers the foundation modules in the first year. In the second year you will be joining students who have an accredited degree in Landscape Architecture. This conversion course structured so that year one is a foundation course. It introduces you to design skills and techniques used to respond to the project briefs and year two of the course you will join with students who have an accredited degree in Landscape Architecture. The course promotes solutions to environmental and community problems in a creative studio environment. The project profiles provide an opportunity to work closely with Landscape Institute policy and demonstrate the authority of Landscape Architecture as a design tool that reshapes our designed ecologies and designed geographies across the full range of scales. This course is designed for students who want a career in landscape architecture and want to shape the world in which we live. You will have a belief and passion to use landscape architecture as a design tool to make new environments for work, play and habitation. This MLA Landscape Architecture course incorporates a conversion course in year one, providing a foundation programme that enables applicants who don’t have a degree in Landscape Architecture an opportunity to enter year two of the programme, where you will join students who have previously completed a degree in Landscape Architecture. The conversion year is a studio based learning environment that delivers a combination of key skills that support the communication of projects, investigating the idea that our laboratory is a designed ecology and that you will learn about the landscape across its range of scales. The second part of the year looks at the idea that landscape is a sequence of interrelated designed environments connected by land, ecology, water, climate and infrastructure, sitting in a cultural context that extends from Parish to global political and economic systems. The second year extends the studio as a studio of the mind, promoting an environment that encourages exploration and investigation. There is a strong emphasis on research that underpins new frontiers of the designed environment. Students will work on research-led design projects relating to well-being, the design process, designed ecologies and climate change, settlement design, food security and large scale infrastructure schemes like High Speed 2 (HS2) and flood alleviation.