Landscape Architecture and Planning (MLP) / MSc

Introduction

The MSc programme Landscape Architecture and Planning focuses on the deliberate construction and reconstruction of the environment. It involves research, planning and design of landscape to create, maintain, protect and enhance places to be functional, meaningful, sustainable and beautiful. In order to comprehend the complex relationships between people, nature and landscape the study integrates concepts and approaches from both the creative arts and the natural and social sciences and incorporates the latest advances in technology. It combines the professional skills of physical design and spatial planning with the ability to conduct research and express a scholarly attitude. Landscape Architecture and Planning is concerned both with the creative process of making plans and designs on various spatial scales and with different temporal horizons, with the organization of interactive or participatory decision making processes towards the generation of plans and policies and with the development and management of scientific knowledge. This is done in an integrative manner, whereby planning and design decisions are legitimized by sound academic knowledge and the validity and utility of knowledge is tested in the process of planning and design. The study focuses primarily on the rural-urban metropolitan landscape of The Netherlands and Western Europe in a dynamic and global context of cultural, ecological, technological, economic and political transformations.

Learning Outcomes

After successful completion of this MSc programme graduates are expected to:
- be able to carry out a critical and normative landscape analysis on interrelated scales (regional- local- site) by interpreting multidimensional data with the use of consistent theoretical concepts in order to define a clear (potential) problem and judge about opportunities and limitations for design and planning;
- be able to compare design and planning theories, concepts and approaches, can distinguish different traditions in design and planning and are able to place the own discipline in a multidisciplinary framework;
- be able to compare sociological and geographical theories and concepts associated with the interaction between people and place and analyze the socio-cultural impact of transformation of the countryside and urban development on rural areas in highly urbanized societies (specialization Socio-Spatial Analysis);
- be able to recall important issues in the contemporary academic design and planning debate and can assess the relevance of methodologies, methods and techniques in order to conduct research and are able to reflect on it;
- be able to independently formulate and execute a scientifically based landscape research, planning research, socio-spatial research, design research or research-by-design;
- be able to develop scientifically legitimized designs and plans on interrelating spatial scales and with different temporal horizons and are able to evaluate the consequences of alternative choices;
- be creative and effective in re-organizing data and field research to synthesize a specific design problem and design potential and propose alternative consequences of landscape interventions to a compelling degree of detail (specialization Landscape Architecture);
- be able to link current and future initiatives, projects and strategies that influences the spatial organization, either its use, management, design and lay-out from different stakeholders activities and perspectives (specialization Spatial Planning);
- be able to evaluate the significance of different types of socio-political discourses on space, recognize and diagnose spatial and urban-rural conflicts, propose solutions for those conflicts and improve socio-spatial quality (specialization Socio-Spatial Analysis);
- have an independent and critical attitude, are able to reason logically and distinguishes matters of primary and secondary importance;
- be able to present scientific views and research to members of scientific and non-scientific communities, are competent in scientific debate and article writing, are able to express in the English language;
- be able to reflect on personal action and thinking, be able to reframe, extent and apply knowledge, have skills to learn contextually, have an open attitude to discussion and be consciousness of ethical matters;
- be efficient, goal-directed, customer-oriented, loyal and flexible;
- have communicative, diplomatic, organizational, budgetary and commercial skills and are able to manage a team.

Specializations

- Landscape Architecture;
- Socio-Spatial Analysis;
- Spatial Planning.

Programme Director

Drs J.F.B. Philipsen
Phone: 0317-(4)82771
Email: jan.philipsen@wur.nl

Study Adviser(s)

- Ir J.P.A. van Nieuwenhuize
Phone: 0317-(4)83474
Email: mlp.msc@wur.nl
- Ir C.Q.J.M. Heukels
Phone: 0317-(4)81896
Email: mlp.msc@wur.nl
Consultation hours: weekly based on reservation on list or by email jannie.welling@wur.nl
Lumen Room 0.215, Droevendaalsesteeg 3a, 6708 PB Wageningen

Programme Committee

Chair: Drs J.F.B. Philipsen
Secretary: J. Welling

Internet

http://www.mlp.wur.nl

Study Association

Genius Loci
Forum building, Droevendaalsesteeg 2, 6708 PB Wageningen
Internet: http://www.stgeniusloci.nl/