Masters Degree In Lansdcape Design
There are schools that offer post graduate courses in landscape design. This page will look at some of the things a graduate needs to consider if they want to pursue a masters degree in landscape design. Landscape design is, as the name would suggest, the process of combining elements of art and science to create functional and aesthetically pleasing outdoor spaces. A good landscape designer will know how to blend a building in with its natural surroundings through use of color and form – with an emphasis on uniting beauty and function. They also have a good deal of knowledge about plants which increases their capacity to create aesthetic architectural settings. Both homeowners and institutions are usually eager to optimize the spaces that are available to them and as such they need experts who can help them shape the land so that it reflects a site’s natural qualities with plant material that is a reflection of the region. Hence the need for a landscape designer, who can experiment with different designs that factor in traffic patterns, family activities, weather patterns and locations of plants. It is important to draw a distinction between a landscape designer and a landscape architect, and the difference is really one of scale. Landscape designers tend to focus on simple construction issues and plantings to improve the look of the site in question and as such spend most of their time concerning themselves with areas like driveways, paths, walks, terraces, walls, steps and plantings. Landscape architects on the other hand, tend to design areas such as public parks, college campuses, playgrounds and residential areas. They spend much of their time creating landscaping plans and designs, doing research, preparing cost estimates and representative models and observing the actual construction of those landscapes that they’ve designed. There are a number of institutions that offer Certificate, Associate, Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Landscape design. Institutes offering postgraduate degrees such as a landscape design masters will require that the applicant already has a degree and preferably in a related field. You will of course need to contact those Universities offering post graduate courses in the fields that interest you, to find out what their pre-requisites for admission are, as well as seeing what areas you’ll be likely to specializing in. As a general rule, those completing a Landscape design master’s degree program will go onto careers as landscape designers specializing in residential and smaller scale projects. A lot of schools have structured their post graduate programs so that professionals can complete the course requirements during weekday evenings and on Saturdays, therefore causing minimum disruption to their work life. It will vary from school to school, but students could generally expect that a post graduate course would cover the following areas: Gardening and landscape design history; plant materials; technical elements such as drafting, graphic representation and landscape construction, as well as an internship. Landscape architecture is a little more involved as it is a state regulated profession that concentrates on larger scale projects with a range of engineering challenges. A bachelor’s degree in landscape architecture will generally take 4 to 5 years to complete, with a master’s degree requiring an additional 2 to 3 years of study once the bachelor’s degree has been obtained. |