Landscape Architecture is a design discipline that gives you the skills to contribute to a more sustainable and just future for all. 

If you are a creative person who cares deeply about the living planet and the environment that surrounds you, this programme will empower you to imagine and enact the change you want to see.

Our professionally accredited, two-year, full-time post-graduate Master’s in Landscape Architecture (MLA) programme is open to students from a range of academic and professional backgrounds who want to develop their own socially and environmentally aware design practice.

Why landscape architecture? 

Landscapes are vibrant, complex entities which are always changing. They sustain us. They are powerful sensory spaces we inhabit or simply traverse. They are also the sites of some of the most pressing challenges of our times.

Landscape architects plan and design with landscapes. They work across urban and rural environments, often in exciting multi-disciplinary teams.

Landscape architecture is deployed on spatial scales ranging from the garden to the region, and timescales ranging from seasons to centuries. Being a landscape architect gives you the tools to make sense of and work within complex socioecological contexts.

Why choose our programme? 

We constantly re-examine our teaching and research practices to respond to our current context and student feedback.

The question of how to design with landscapes and their multispecies communities in a climate and biodiversity crisis underpins our programme.

We are in an art college with a distinctive design culture and exceptional workshop facilities. We are therefore uniquely placed to support you in developing your making-thinking practice, which will enable you to critically understand and apply environmental theories to practical contexts.

Taught by dedicated academics and practitioners, you will actively engage with urgent socioecological questions through site-specific and design-led learning. You will explore how to formulate meaningful design responses in our time of crisis.

If you are curious, creative and motivated to grow your landscape architectural voice, we would love to have you on our programme. 

To find out more about this course, visit our Degree Finder: Landscape Architecture.

Our graduates are sought after by landscape architecture design practices in Scotland, the UK and beyond with a 100% employment rate, often working in leading design studios.

We support you to move towards the type of landscape-related practice you are passionate about. Beyond landscape architectural design studios, your landscape architectural skillset can also be deployed in other contexts including:

• Planning
• Landscape advocacy
• Policy writing
• Conservation and rewilding
• Environmental activism
• Community engagement
• Landscape-related art practice
• Research

Examples of organisations our graduates work at or are affiliated with include:

• Connecting Threads, an ambitious cultural project in the River Tweed
• Glasgow and Edinburgh City Councils
• Harvard University Graduate School of Design
• NatureScot, Scotland’s Nature Agency
• Trees for Life, a charity working to rewild the Scottish Highlands
• Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh
• SUSTRANS, Scotland’s Active Travel charity

If you'd like to study on a postgraduate programme at Edinburgh College of Art, you must apply through EUCLID, our online application system. You can find out how to do this on the University of Edinburgh website, where you'll also be able to:

• see detailed entrance requirements for each programme on the Degree Finder
• get information on what to expect after you apply
• find out about study modes, start dates and fees
• find out if, and how, you need to submit a portfolio, showreel or research proposal
• find out where to go for further advice and guidance.