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.

What’s covered in the course?
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 MA 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.

Entry Requirements

Essential Requirements

Essential
Entry to year 1 (Conversion Course): Minimum Lower Second-Class degree (2:2).

International students must meet all the Border Agency entry criteria for the programme.

UK students
Award: MA Starting: Sep 2021
Mode Duration Fees
Full Time 2 years (3 year option available – see below*) £6,600 per year

*Conversion route options and fees
You will have the option to study the Master’s element either full time or part time following discussion with the Course Director.

Option 1: Conversion plus MA over 2 years
Attendance is one day per week in year one, and two days per week in year two.

Option 2: Conversion plus MA over 3 years
Attendance is one day per week over three years. You would pay the full time fee for year 1 and the part time fee in years 2 and 3. The part time fee is 50% of the full time fee.

Personal statement
Students are required to submit a personal statement as part of their application for this course.

Your postgraduate personal statement is going to shine a light on your personal experience, academic success, personal skills and any other factors that will support your application for further study.

Here are the key areas you’ll need to address:

Your passion and motivations
Studying a postgraduate course usually means you want to specialise in something. So what’s driving you?

Why this course?
Show that you’ve researched the course offering. What is it about this particular course that appeals to you? Is it the lecturers? The modules? Etc.

What makes you a good postgraduate candidate?
Tutors want to know that you can handle postgraduate study, so show them how your undergraduate experiences or work life has equipped you for a more advanced level of study. Key areas to address are research and group work but this can vary depending on your chosen course.

Relevant academic or work experience
Add anything relevant that relates back to your chosen course and shows how your skills will contribute towards your learning. What extra-curricular activities have you taken part in? What awards have you won? What employment or voluntary experience do you have that has helped you develop transferable skills? How do these specifically relate to the course you are applying for?

You should also mention your future plans and how a postgraduate qualification fits in. Try to look beyond your postgraduate study – do you plan to jump straight into a specific career or follow your studies with a research degree? Lastly, use plain, professional English and, where possible, utilise the language of your chosen industry.

Get more information on writing personal statements.

Additional costs
Our courses include activities such as performance, exhibitions, field trips and production of works or artefacts which may require you to purchase specific equipment, instruments, books, materials, hire of venues and accommodation, or other items.

Based on the past experience of our students, you might find it helpful to set aside about £50 for each year of your studies for your personal stationery and study materials. All our students are provided with 100 free pages of printing each year to a maximum total value of £15.

Accommodation and living costs
The cost of accommodation and other living costs are not included within your course fees. More information on the cost of accommodation can be found in our accommodation pages.

International students
Award: MA Starting: Sep 2021
Mode Duration Fees
Full Time 2 years £13,200 per year
Apply Online
If you’re unable to use the online form for any reason, you can complete our PDF application form and equal opportunities PDF form instead. The University reserves the right to increase fees in line with inflation based on the Retail Prices Index or to reflect changes in Government funding policies or changes agreed by Parliament up to a maximum of five per cent.

*Conversion route options and fees
You will have the option to study the Master’s element either full time or part time following discussion with the Course Director.

Option 1: Conversion plus MA over 2 years
Attendance is one day per week in year one, and two days per week in year two.

Option 2: Conversion plus MA over 3 years
Attendance is one day per week over three years. You would pay the full time fee for year 1 and the part time fee in years 2 and 3. The part time fee is 50% of the full time fee.

Personal statement
Students are required to submit a personal statement as part of their application for this course.

Your postgraduate personal statement is going to shine a light on your personal experience, academic success, personal skills and any other factors that will support your application for further study.

Here are the key areas you’ll need to address:

Your passion and motivations
Studying a postgraduate course usually means you want to specialise in something. So what’s driving you?

Why this course?
Show that you’ve researched the course offering. What is it about this particular course that appeals to you? Is it the lecturers? The modules? Etc.

What makes you a good postgraduate candidate?
Tutors want to know that you can handle postgraduate study, so show them how your undergraduate experiences or work life has equipped you for a more advanced level of study. Key areas to address are research and group work but this can vary depending on your chosen course.

Relevant academic or work experience
Add anything relevant that relates back to your chosen course and shows how your skills will contribute towards your learning. What extra-curricular activities have you taken part in? What awards have you won? What employment or voluntary experience do you have that has helped you develop transferable skills? How do these specifically relate to the course you are applying for?

You should also mention your future plans and how a postgraduate qualification fits in. Try to look beyond your postgraduate study – do you plan to jump straight into a specific career or follow your studies with a research degree? Lastly, use plain, professional English and, where possible, utilise the language of your chosen industry.

Get more information on writing personal statements.

Additional costs
Our courses include activities such as performance, exhibitions, field trips and production of works or artefacts which may require you to purchase specific equipment, instruments, books, materials, hire of venues and accommodation, or other items.

Based on the past experience of our students, you might find it helpful to set aside about £50 for each year of your studies for your personal stationery and study materials. All our students are provided with 100 free pages of printing each year to a maximum total value of £15.

Accommodation and living costs
The cost of accommodation and other living costs are not included within your course fees. More information on the cost of accommodation can be found in our accommodation pages.

In order to complete this course a student must successfully complete all the following CORE modules (totalling 120 credits):

Skills20 credits
Designed Ecologies40 credits
Landscape – Culture and Nature20 credits
Designed Geographies40 credits
The majority of your studies will be assessed by coursework. We feel this best mirrors the way you’d work in the real world and so better prepares you for a career in landscape design and architecture.

The teaching approach places an emphasis on the studio format, supported by a series of lectures and workshops delivered by renowned landscape practitioners and educators from the UK and overseas. We will continue to develop our Expert Lecture series and as a guide to the quality and range of speakers, with last year’s series welcoming Claude Cormier (Canada), Andrew Charleson (New Zealand), Kim Wilkie (UK) and Noel Farrer PLI (UK).

If you haven’t got a background in landscape architecture, you can build expertise and establish the fundamental design principles on the Conversion Course, introducing you to the core skills needed throughout the design process, studying plant ecologies in urban and rural ecosystems, explore how the quality of life for urban communities and commerce can be enhanced. Understand and interpret landscape culture and set the foundations for progression onto the second year of the programme (MA).

The second year promotes the studio as an environment of investigation, collaboration and experimentation. You will develop your own identity as a designer through personal research leading to a final piece of work considering how other perspectives should contribute to design decision-making. Develop and apply the skills that you have established within the studio, design exercises and analysis of design. You can extend your portfolio of skills and strengthen your CV through the Co-LAB module, developing capabilities and contextual understanding for the workplace. You will also produce a design thesis, responding to the world’s shortages in resources.

You will be based in our Bauhaus inspired City Centre Campus Parkside Building and have access to industry standard facilities including digital studios, 3D design workshops, 3D printing and rapid prototyping.

We have a range of excellent resources including Eastside Park, and the Botanical Gardens on our doorsteps and regularly visit leading horticulture nurseries and Westonbirt Arboretum. The dynamic evolution of Birmingham through the implementation of the Big City Plan provides inspiration to your studies, introducing a strong example of contemporary civic space and park design and a laboratory to work and learn in.

Have you been looking through the internet for information on the top architecture universities in the world? Do you often get confused by the conflicting information you see on it online? You need not search further as you will find the answer to this question in the article below.

Postgraduate landscape architecture

Programme description
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.

Accreditation
This programme is professionally accredited by the Landscape Institute.

Programme structure
Four design courses, taking the form of design studios, underpin the programme. This type of course promotes a teaching and learning environment in which students are encouraged to take risks and experiment.

Studios provide the opportunity for collective research, discussion and development of ideas. Design exploration is supported and informed by technical and theoretical courses which run in parallel to the studio-based learning and teaching.

In the second year of study you will develop a major design project and reflect upon your approach to landscape architecture in the form of an academic portfolio.

The programme culminates in the opportunity to stage a public exhibition of your final year design proposals – the ECA Degree Show.

Find out more about compulsory and optional courses
We link to the latest information available. Please note that this may be for a previous academic year and should be considered indicative.

Award Title Duration Study mode
MLA 21 Months Full-time Programme structure 2020/21
Learning outcomes
The programme aims to provide an environment of study at postgraduate level where students:

Apply and develop the knowledge, understanding and skills gained at undergraduate level to the mastery of the discipline of landscape architecture.
Develop knowledge, understanding and skills in the technical, theoretical and practical concerns of the discipline.
Extend ability in reading and understanding a range of environments and landscapes at different scales, and develop a critical understanding of landscape architectural practice.
Develop original and creative design skills and the ability to engage with different stages of landscape architecture design practice autonomously.
Career opportunities
As a discipline and a profession Landscape Architecture has the potential to inform our environment at every scale. The MLA programme seeks to foster creative and critical designers ; ethical, intelligent, highly skilled and imaginative practitioners, able to navigate the full extent of the profession.

The programme aims to enable graduates to enter the profession with a sophisticated portfolio of flexible skills, knowledge and understanding.

Graduates from the MLA programme progress to work in design practice and landscape stewardship both nationally and internationally, as well as contributing to academia and aspects of governance of a wide spectrum of landscapes across a broad range of scales.

Entry requirements
Normally a UK 2:1 honours degree, or its international equivalent, in landscape architecture or a related subject such as architecture, design, geography, planning, ecology or fine art. You should have a strong interest in landscape architecture and show creative potential.

You must submit a portfolio of recent work as part of your application.Your portfolio should:

collectively demonstrate your potential ability to visualise your design ideas
demonstrate creative skills
be sourced from work you produced at school or from a relevant first degree such as landscape architecture, architecture, art or other design programme or extra-curricular activities or self-led projects
As part of the application process, within your portfolio you must submit a personal statement and CV. On the first page of the portfolio incorporate your name and on the pages immediately following include a brief CV and your personal statement.

Your personal statement must include (but is not limited to) a 300 word summary addressing the following points:

What is your specialist field of interest?
How would you hope your time on this programme will form your landscape architectural practice?
What are your ambitions following your successful graduation from this programme?
If you do not meet the academic entry requirements, we may still consider your application on the basis of your portfolio and/or relevant professional experience.

(Revised 08/10/20 to update the portfolio requirements.)

International qualifications
Check whether your international qualifications meet our general entry requirements:

Entry requirements by country
English language requirements
You must demonstrate a level of English language competency at a level that will enable you to succeed in your studies, regardless of your nationality or country of residence.

English language tests
For 2021 entry we will accept the following English language qualifications at the grades specified:

IELTS: total 6.5 (at least 6.0 in each module)
TOEFL-iBT (including Special Home Edition): total 92 (at least 20 in each module). We do not accept TOEFL MyBest Score to meet our English language requirements.
CAE and CPE: total 176 (at least 169 in each module)
Trinity ISE: ISE II with distinctions in all four components
Your English language qualification must be no more than three and a half years old from the start date of the programme you are applying to study, unless you are using IELTS, TOEFL, PTE Academic or Trinity ISE, in which case it must be no more than two years old.

Degrees taught and assessed in English
We also accept an undergraduate or postgraduate degree that has been taught and assessed in English in a majority English speaking country, as defined by UK Visas and Immigration:

UKVI list of majority English speaking countries
We also accept a degree that has been taught and assessed in English from a university on our list of approved universities in non-majority English speaking countries.

If you are not a national of a majority English speaking country, then your degree must be no more than three and a half years old at the beginning of your programme of study.

Find out more about our language requirements:

English language requirements