Landscape Architecture and Planning (MLP) / MSc

Profile

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 compare design and planning theories, concepts and approaches, can distinguish different traditions in design and planning and is able to place the own discipline in a multidisciplinary framework;
- be able to develop scientifically legitimized designs and plans on interrelating spatial scales and with different temporal horizons and is able to evaluate the consequences of alternative choices;
- (specialization Landscape Architecture) be creative and effective in re-organizing data and field research to synthesize a specific design problem and design potential ad propose alternative consequences of landscape interventions to a compelling degree of detail;
- (specialization Spatial Planning) be able to link current and future initiatives, projects and strategies that influence the spatial organization, either its use, management, design and lay-out from different stakeholder activities and perspectives;
- (specialization Socio-Spatial Analysis) 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 improving socio-spatial quality;
- be able to present scientific views, designs, plans and research to members of scientific and non-scientific communities both visually, orally and in text and is able to express him/herself in the English language;
- be able to carry out a critical and normative landscape analysis on interrelated scales (regional - local - site) or a socio-spatial analysis 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 independently formulate and execute a scientifically based landscape research, planning research, socio-spatial research, design research or research-by-design;
- have an independent and critical attitude, is able to reason logically and distinguishes matters of primary and secondary importance;
- be able to reflect on personal action and thinking, is able to reframe, extent and apply knowledge, has skills to learn contextually, has an open attitude to discussion and is conscious of ethical matters;
- be able to plan his/her work processes independently and is honest, incorruptible, efficient, goal-directed, loyal and flexible;
- be able to design and plan his/her own learning processes based on continuous reflection upon personal knowledge, skills, attitudes and performance.

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)

- J.W. Schavemaker, Msc
Phone: 0317-(4)83474
Email: mlp.msc@wur.nl
- Dr ir H. van der Stoep
Phone: 0317-(4)81896
Email: mlp.msc@wur.nl

Consultation hours: weekly based on reservation at http://appointments.owi.wur.nl/blpmlp.
For urgent questions, please contact Jannie Welling (secretary) by email: jannie.welling@wur.nl

Programme Committee

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

Internet

http://www.wageningenuniversity.nl/mlp

Study Association

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