Project A and B Overview

In the final year of the Master of Landscape Architecture, you are given the opportunity to develop and explore your own practice trajectory through an independently generated, rigorous and sustained design research enquiry. This enquiry, undertaken across a full year, is referred to as ‘a Design Research Project.’

Design Research Projects are undertaken as a means of exploring, critiquing and expanding landscape architectural design, practice and research. In this course, students will be presented with the opportunity to adapt, develop, and evolve novel ways of approaching design through research and research through design. Design Research Projects are experimental, rigorous, ideas-led, innovative and generative, necessitating critical engagement with the expanded roles and responsibilities landscape architects might have in local and global contexts. The design research projects developed in the final year of the Master of Landscape Architecture at RMIT equip students with the capacity and expertise to be an advocate and agent of change, actively advancing the discipline and profession of landscape architecture to meet the unique contemporary and future challenges and opportunities.

In this significant capstone course of the MLA program, students will synthesise the agencies that were developed throughout the program. Students will develop skills to articulate, position and develop strategic individual design approaches to prepare for their entry into the profession, as practitioners, researchers or academics.

Project B Overview

In LA Design Research Project A, students develop a design research project proposal positioned within the field of landscape architecture and embark on an experimental yet rigorous design research enquiry. LA Design Research Project B synthesises, extends from and builds upon this initial experimental foundation through progressively more advanced, strategic, iterative development and critical refinement of a design research project at a range of spatial, temporal and operational scales.

This rigorous and sustained design research enquiry is ultimately communicated through a presentation, exhibition, and project document.

In this significant capstone course of the MLA program, students will synthesise their capabilities developed throughout the program, including analysis, critical thinking, communication techniques, formal techniques and positioning within the discipline. Students will evolve and refine skills to articulate, position and develop strategic individual design practices that will enable them for their entry into the profession, as design practitioners, researchers or academics.