Master of Landscape Architecture
Programme Overview
The Master of Landscape Architecture at the National University of Singapore (MLA at NUS) is a two-year, full-time degree programme offering advanced and cutting-edge training in landscape architecture. It is designed for individuals who have completed a Bachelor of Landscape Architecture (BLA) or its equivalent in related disciplines, including architecture, urban planning, and urban design.
The programme equips students with the intellectual, technical, and creative capacities to engage critically with a range of landscape challenges and to thus contribute meaningfully to professional practice and research. We aim for our students to become leaders who shape both spaces and viewpoints—advancing what designed landscapes and landscape research could be in Singapore and in the broader context of Southeast Asia and Asia/South Asia (SEA+).
Vision & Identity
The MLA at NUS is defined by its location. With a distinctly Singapore and SEA+ orientation and an urban, urban–rural, and infrastructural emphasis, the programme is grounded in the situated histories, practices, and knowledges of one of the most dynamic regions in the world. Singapore and SEA+ serve as a site of application, offering a dense, and rapidly changing city-state, where cultural diversity and a cosmopolitan outlook inform landscape practice. In addition, the programme approaches the region as a source of theory, method, and practice in its own right. That is, our students are taught to recognise the plurality of cultural, socio-economic, and ecological actions that shape change here.
Designed Landscapes & Landscape Research
The MLA curriculum is structured around the pairing of designed landscapes and landscape research. This dual emphasis shapes both pedagogical approaches and graduate outcomes, foregrounding design as a situated and relational practice.
The programme prioritizes excellence in designed landscapes, with design understood as both process and product. As a process, landscape design is approached as a creative and exploratory experience. The act of designing a landscape is grounded in sociocultural sensitivities, ecological knowledge, and an engagement with both conventional and emergent technologies and techniques. This includes attention to diverse ways of knowing, making, and inhabiting landscapes. As a product, a designed landscape—expressed through visual and digital media—is expected to inspire, engage, and contribute to meaningful and impactful changes in everyday life, livelihoods, and settlement patterns.
In addition to technical training in learning to design, visualise, and effectively communicate an advanced landscape design project, students are required to develop design research knowledge in Landscape Architecture. NUS is a leading research-intensive university shaping the future and the programme thus supports independent and exploratory modes of inquiry. We encourage our MLA students to devise research questions that are attentive to local contexts, including engagement with power, policy, and planning. Overall, landscape research at MLA at NUS is grounded in the complex and uneven conditions shaping Singapore and SEA+ futures. This integration of design and research positions knowledge as emerging from lived experience and is a distinctive feature of the MLA at NUS.
The Field of Landscape Architecture
Landscape Architecture is a diverse and evolving field. MLA at NUS is supported by a strong faculty whose expertise reflects the breadth of the field. Students learn of its multiple centres and edges, and to the ways these have shifted across time and space. There are opportunities for MLA students to explore a range of practices or to deep dive into a certain approach. Graduates of the programme are thus prepared for a range of professional pathways, including design consultancy, horticulture and landscape management, real estate development, government agency work, media technology, green finance, research laboratory work, curatorial practice, and design publishing and journalism.
Collaboration and Interdisciplinary Learning
MLA students engage in interdisciplinary learning across NUS, a research-intensive university. The programme is situated within the Department of Architecture, with connections to related disciplines including architecture, urban planning, urban design, and integrated sustainable design. Students participate in joint studios, cross-disciplinary electives, and collaborative learning environments guided by scholars and practitioners. These engagements encourage critical reflection on disciplinary boundaries and support forms of collaboration that are attentive to plurality and situated knowledge. In this way, collaboration is understood not only as a technical necessity, but as an ethical and relational practice.
The Student Experience
MLA at NUS maintains a cohort size that supports close interaction among students and faculty, fostering a collaborative and engaged learning environment. This close-knit setting is complemented by strong links to industry in Singapore, which enrich the student experience. Academic faculty deliver core teaching, while practitioners and experts contribute as part-time tutors and design reviewers, bringing current professional perspectives into the programme. Guest lectures are a regular feature of each semester.
A key strength of the programme, as identified by students, is its emphasis on advanced technology as a tool for design research, policy, and planning. Another strength of the program is our emphasis on embodied modes of learning. Students undertake guided fieldwork to construction sites, completed landscapes, exhibitions, and professional offices. They further extend their learning through directed and self-directed fieldwork across Singapore and SEA+. Together, these experiences enable critical engagement with place and advanced practice in Landscape Architecture.
Accreditation
Since the establishment of the MLA at NUS in 2009, DOA has expanded to include the Bachelor of Landscape Architecture in 2020, marking a significant development in landscape architecture education in Singapore.
NUS Landscape Architecture (BLA and MLA) offers the only tertiary-level programmes in Singapore that qualify graduates for professional accreditation through the Landscape Architects Accreditation Programme of the Singapore Institute of Landscape Architects.
HANDBOOK
Please refer to MLA handbook for more details.