Landscape Architecture MA/MLA

Programme Directors: Laura Allen, Mark Smout

Landscape Architecture MA and MLA are new and evolving professionally accredited programmes at The Bartlett School of Architecture. They respond to an increasing urgency to contribute to the understanding of ecological and environmental fields and their relationship with the built environment. In this era of climate emergency, these Master’s programmes – focusing on landscape research, technical knowledge, strategic thinking and imaginative design – give us the unique ability to work with real-world problems at a local and geographic scale. These challenges include issues of sustainability, biodiversity and landscape inequality affected by the transformative potential of climate change across our rural and urban landscapes. Shown here are the three design studios, all staffed by landscape practitioners and academics with distinct agendas. Their interests were broad and varied, addressing numerous speculative grounds for designing a better future. Themes that include extreme earthquake environments and resilient landscapes, new ways of thinking about urban rewilding via future biomorphic urbanism and biophilic cities, and the radical reforestation of the UK’s northern forests are testament to the breadth and depth of Landscape Architecture’s spatial and intellectual focus here at The Bartlett. The design studio provides fundamental and specialised knowledge and a strong identity for students to use as the basis for developing their own approach to the contemporary study of landscape architecture. Design teaching is delivered side-by-side with History & Theory, Practice, and Environment and Technology teaching. Also presented here are three of the key modules from the programme: Landscape, Inhabitation & Environmental Systems; Landscape, Ecology & Urban Environments; and Landscape Thesis. It has been a challenging year. We are profoundly impressed by how swiftly our students adapted to working at home, online teaching, navigating digital whiteboards and contributing to virtual crits since working together face-to-face at 22 Gordon Street was interrupted in March 2020 and they were scattered across the globe. We finally say farewell and thank you to our and MA students and first graduating MLA cohort from a distance. As we say our goodbyes, we have already embarked on a new year of Landscape Architecture at The Bartlett. The programme has grown, which has had a positive effect on the diversity of our teaching, increased staff and student numbers allow us to embrace a greater scope of design, theoretical, technological, cultural, environmental, and ecological enquiry.