Master of Landscape Architecture

The Master of Landscape Architecture is the international standard of landscape architecture education and can open-up new employment and business opportunities in New Zealand and overseas.

About this programme

Lincoln University offers you two taught master’s options, depending on your previous study. Both will allow you to grow an exciting future in the industry.

Our 240-credit (two year) Master of Landscape Architecture offers those without an accredited BLA, but with an undergraduate university degree in any other discipline, the opportunity to achieve a landscape architecture degree accredited by the New Zealand Institute of Landscape Architects (NZILA).

Our 120-credit (one year) Master of Landscape Architecture offers those with an accredited Bachelor of Landscape Architecture (BLA) the opportunity to pursue more advanced or specialised study, such as evidence-based design.

Graduates are eligible to become registered professionals and are highly sought-after in public and private sectors in Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia and further afield.

How you’ll grow

• You’ll cultivate a strong in-depth foundation in landscape design and planning plus critical thinking based on real-world experience gained during your study
• Expand your capabilities with specialist knowledge in landscape and urban ecology, resilient landscape design, sustainable communities, structure planning, urban and rural landscapes as well as indigenous Māori landscape design
• With a degree taught by the School of Landscape Architecture – New Zealand’s longest-established landscape architecture training institution and acclaimed internationally.

Career opportunities

This programme will prepare you for a career as a landscape architect. You can start your own practice, or work for a landscape architecture firm or in a government organization. You’ll also be able to collaborate with ecologists, architects, planners and engineers on a wide range of projects.

Graduate Attributes

Graduate Attributes refer to the knowledge, skills, and values that you gain from completing your qualification. These high-level qualities will prepare you for career success, further study or research and making a valuable contribution to society in your chosen field.

Knowledge

• Explain how environmental cultural and socio-economic systems and processes including landscape planning, conservation, and management shape landscapes such as urban, rural, riparian, and montane landscapes at various levels.
• Describe the landscape dimensions of sustainability, human health and wellbeing.
• Describe how different types and historical examples of designed landscape have been created, and of the cultural meanings they express.
• Describe their design process and evaluate frameworks for landscape assessment and design through an awareness of place.
• Discuss theoretical Māori and indigenous concepts and applied approaches to design.
• Describe and identify a basic range of plant materials, their environmental requirements and tolerances, and common plant production techniques.
• Discuss theoretical, professional and ethical concepts, methods and policies underlying the practice of landscape architecture.

Skills

• Apply methods of inventory and analysis, design, assessment, and landscape planning.
• Express critical thinking through design.
• Locate, evaluate, synthesise, and use information from a range of sources to enable evidence-based design.
• Apply a range of business and managerial skills required in landscape practice, including efficient and effective personal time management and project management skills.
• Use a range of personal attributes including adaptability and an ability to learn and be able to transfer problems solving skills across a range of projects and scales.
• Communicate effectively in speech, graphics and writing to specific audiences, across a range of media.
• Engage in effective working relationships with a wide range of people and communities.
• Use basis office applications, including graphic, communication, and CAD software, in landscape architectural applications.
• Undertake design practice within a public policy context and under the statutory and institutional processes for managing landscape change at a range of scales.
• Manipulate surfaces using basic site engineering techniques relating to stormwater management and changes in level.
• Use natural and manufactured landscape materials in creative and practical design responses and specify them appropriately to facilitate landscape implementation.
• Apply a practical understanding of the relationships between design, planning and management when working with plant communities and associations.
• Draft specifications and manage contract administration for project implementation.
• Scholarly research methods, skills and report writing.

Values

• Express familiarity with the diversity of practice of landscape architecture including the need to commit to professional ethics, codes of conduct, protocols and procedures.
• Be open and sensitive to people from a wide range of backgrounds and communities.
• Express a commitment to landscape sustainability.
• Recognise Māori cultural values and related design practice.