Postgraduate Course: Landscape architecture design exploration: Part 2 (ARCH11270)
Course Outline
| School | Edinburgh College of Art |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
| Course type | Dissertation |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 40 |
ECTS Credits | 20 |
| Summary | This is a research-led landscape architecture design studio offering a thematic area of investigation and a terrain. This design course builds upon and advances the theoretical and critical approach that you will have established in prior landscape architectural study. For the majority of students on this course, your work will continue from the semester 1 course: Extended Landscape Architectural Design Exploration: Part 1. If you are entering the programme as a visiting student of landscape architecture you will be supported in developing a firm approach to the course syllabus that meets with your own areas of interest in the discipline.
Within this studio we ask you to be ambitious in cementing your knowledge, skills and understanding by taking a clear and distinctive design enquiry forward to detailed design resolution. You are required to apply and demonstrate knowledge through different scales of propositional design in order to manifest a speculative future for a project site. You will be encouraged to take an integrative approach to design by considering physical, social, cultural and environmental aspects of the landscape holistically. In support of the advanced nature of this course, you will engage with specialist experts and practitioners in developing design proposals that integrate planting, materiality and construction techniques. On completion of the course you should feel confident that you have developed integrated knowledge in the science, planning, design, implementation and management of a large scale landscape based projects; you should be able to apply this knowledge, skills and understanding autonomously. |
| Course description |
This design course focuses your knowledge attainment upon decision and proposal making in landscape architectural practice. Considerations of scale will be of primary concern as you bring your ideas into focus and begin to make bespoke proposals that can activate positive socio-ecological change in the landscape. Experimentation will be encouraged as a means to test your ideas and you will be asked to articulate a clear and specifically scaled design agenda.
Deeply considered judgements about social and environmental change should be supported with applied decision making and you should be able to articulate design resolutions in both space and in time. You will be asked to situate your work in the specificity of a given site or sites and communicate original responses as to the use of materials, plants, water and topography. Lectures and seminars will support development of knowledge specific to detail design, materiality and plantingYou will be asked to communicate your ideas around programmatic intentions and define the meaning and significance of the human landscape experience. You will curate your work within a dedicated space in the studio environment and you should give very careful consideration to the way that you present the final assembly of your portfolio for your internal examination. You will be encouraged to inter-relate the final communication (verbal, visual) of the work to the design process that generated the proposals.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | This Course requires additional costs to be met by the Student.
Travel and Accommodation: There are optional travel costs associated with field-trips. This course will share the same site as ARCH11271 Design Exploration Part 1 (Semester 1). The main field-trip will therefore happen in Semester 1, but you may wish to revisit the site in Semester 2. This is why we have indicated this travel cost as optional as it will be up to individual students. The geographical locations of studio units for this course change every year. Student will be expected to support the cost of local, national or international travel, depending on which studio unit they choose, as well as the cost of accommodation for one week maximum.
Equipment and software: Most equipment and software required will be provided by the School. However, you will probably find it useful to have your own laptop. There are also options to borrow a laptop from the University, and you will also have free access to all our computer labs.
Materials and printing: Material and printing needs will be unique to you and to the drawing/making techniques you will develop. Course Organisers will support you in meeting intended learning outcomes while keeping material costs to a minimum, encouraging sustainable, responsible sourcing through Free Use Hub. but students will be expected to fund optional material costs as necessary for their own project work.
To fully participate in this course students are recommended to budget a minimum of £100, with an additional £200 if taking part a field-trip. |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2025/26, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: 0 |
| Course Start |
Semester 2 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
400
(
Lecture Hours 8,
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 6,
Supervised Practical/Workshop/Studio Hours 8,
Feedback/Feedforward Hours 1.5,
Summative Assessment Hours 0.5,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 8,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
368 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
Formative:
There will be three formative studio based design reviews during this course. Feedback/feedforward appraisal will be verbal at all three reviews.
Written feedback/feedforward comment will be provided following the second studio review.
Summative assessment:
100% portfolio/exhibition
Critically curated portfolio of work, which addresses analysis, interpretation and proposal making. The portfolio should demonstrate knowledge and understanding of how landscapes operate as dynamic systems. Design sensibility should be advanced through a range of scales demonstrating a clear and unique response to the specific concerns of the landscape of your study. The portfolio should be finely curated in a form that is pertinent to the purposes of exhibition and should be supported by a 150-word abstract communicating the overall proposal. You are encouraged to make three-dimensional work as part of your design experimentation and to document this as part of the staging of your portfolio. |
| Feedback |
Students will receive regular verbal feedback/feedforward appraisal as to the strengths and deficiencies of their design at individual tutorial sessions throughout the semester.
Students will take part in three formative reviews during the semester and will receive a written formative feedback/feedforward comment following the second studio review. This will be aligned to learning outcome criteria with the aim of supporting students in improving and refining the final portfolio and exhibition submission.
Written feedback will be provided based on the summative submission and will detail learning outcome attainment. |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Succinctly articulate a refined individual project proposal within a given territory drawing on comprehensive critical analysis and original landscape interpretation.
- Demonstrate extensive experimentation and sound reasoning in articulating an advanced design process that acknowledges the landscape as a dynamic system.
- Demonstrate advanced design sensibility through a range of scales proposing a resolved and creative response to the physical, socio-ecological and bodily experiential opportunities of the landscape.
- Represent and communicate design proposals to a professional standard in the form of a sophisticated curated portfolio exhibition.
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Reading List
Corner, J. (1997) Ecology and Landscape as Agents of Creativity. In Thompson, G/Steiner, F (Eds) Ecological Design and Planning. John Wiley and Sons
Dunnett, N (Editor) and Hitchmough, J (2008) The Dynamic Landscape: Design, Ecology and Management of Naturalistic Urban Planting. Spon Press
Kwon, M (2004) One Place after Another: Site Specific Art and Locational Identity. MIT Press
Leatherbarrow, D. (2015) Topographical Stories: Studies in Landscape and Architecture. (Penn Studies in Landscape Architecture)
Prominski, M (2005) Designing Landscapes as Evolutionary Systems. The Design Journal.
Schön, Donald A. (1991) The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. Arena
Vogt. G. (2012) Miniature and panorama: Vogt Landscape Architects, projects, 200-12. Springer
Zimmerman, A. (2015) Constructing Landscape: Materials, Techniques, Structural Components. Birkhauser. |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
(Characteristic 1) The course will help students to develop knowledge that covers and integrates the main areas of the discipline of Landscape Architecture.
(Characteristic 2) The graduate attributes that are identified under Characteristic 2 hold strong relevancies to the Landscape Institutes ¿Elements and areas of practice¿ which provides a reference point for education in the profession ensuring that the Landscape Institutes educational systems are fit for purpose, and prepare individuals for their first steps in building a successful career.
Through the learning experience students will be supported in deploying applied knowledge and will be encouraged to use a range of professional skills that would also be utilised in professional environments within practice.
(Characteristic 3) students will plan and execute a significant project of design research and investigation and advance that thinking into the making of proposals that are relevant, sustainable and ultimately implementable.
(Characteristic 4) within the studio environment students will be supported in using a range of routine skills as they apply to their own project ideas but will also be encouraged to develop advanced and specialist skills where they hold specific relevancy or will allow a student to take a highly original response to the landscape. The course will allow students to communicate their work with peers, more senior colleagues and specialists. The course will require students to present their work, visually and verbally and support will be given through the course in advancing vital skills around this characteristic.
(Characteristic 5) Exercise substantial autonomy and initiative in professional and equivalent activities. Students are asked to develop a clear standpoint and take a distinct and original response and actively manage their own approach so that it holds relevancy in both theory and practice.
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| Keywords | landscape architecture,advanced design,landscape portfolio,landscape exhibition |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Miss Anna Rhodes
Tel: (0131 6)50 4646
Email: arhodes@exseed.ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Miss Chloe Hancock
Tel: (0131 6)50 4124
Email: chancock@ed.ac.uk |
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