Study programme - MSc Landscape Architecture and Planning

If you enrol in this programme, you join an academic, research-oriented group, where you learn to unravel planning processes or to develop creative designs founded on in-depth academic knowledge. As part of the programme, you plan, work, and reflect on your own research topic, supported and coached by experts.

Career tracks

Depending on your personal ambitions, the programme offers several career tracks:

  • Professional track: Professional track: Here you focus on planning or design issues in the professional workfield. You choose this track if your aim is to work in the public or private sectors. This track includes:
  • Research track: Here your focus is research-oriented, for example if you intend to continue with a PhD after graduation, or if you intend to work as a landscape researcher. This track includes:
  • Hybrid track: in some cases, a combination of the two tracks can be made.

Common courses for both specialisations (30 ECTS)

A total of 30 ECTS in courses form the common part of the programme:

Reflections on Planning and Design Practices

Reflections on Planning and Design Practices offers historical and geographical comparative perspectives on planning and design practices. You learn about specific theories and about related concepts, methods and skills that together make up a toolkit with which you can critically observe and reflect on planning and design practices.

Landscape Theory and Analysis

Landscape Theory and Analysis enables you to understand and analyse landscapes from three different theoretical perspectives: Landscape as an object, landscape as a cultural construct, and landscape as an experience. You learn to connect these theoretical perspectives and the analysis tools you use in planning and design practice.

Research Methodology for Planning and Design

In this course, you are challenged to evaluate the adequacy of existing planning and design research methods for different research problems, and to reflect critically on their feasibility when addressing specific research questions.

Atelier Landscape Architecture and Planning OR Research Master Cluster: Proposal Writing

In the Atelier Landscape Architecture and Planning, you team up with students from many other disciplines in project groups to address real-world planning and design issues. The assignments you work on are extremely varied as they are set by clients from many different backgrounds, such as local or regional governments, NGOs or citizen groups.

You and your team explore the relevant information and interact with relevant stakeholders, transforming your ideas into elaborate designs and strategies for their implementation. Working as an interdisciplinary team allows you to view the information from different perspectives, and to translate this into an advice, often in the form of a design, on future actions for the client.

If you choose the programme’s research track, you will take Research Master Cluster: Proposal Writing instead of the Atelier Landscape Architecture and Planning. This course helps you acquire and/or improve your skills in writing and defending a scientific research proposal.

Modular skills training

Next to the Atelier course you take 3 ECTS of modular skills training courses, also called MOS modules.

Restricted optional (6 ECTS) and electives

You select one of five restricted optional courses to deepen your knowledge and skills in the field of:

  • Climate and Energy: the course Climate-responsive Planning and Design
  • Climate and Water: the course Integrated Water Management
  • Culture and Economy: the course Global Landscapes and Place-Making
  • Food and Health: the course Foodscapes, Urban Lifestyles and Transition
  • Transitions in Public Space: Planning, Design and Management

Depending on your specialisation, you also choose 6-12 ECTS in free choice electives.

Specialisation courses, practice and thesis research

You can find details of the specialisation courses, practice options and thesis research on the specialisation pages for Landscape Architecture and Spatial Planning.