Green spaces are crucial for our society. They contribute to ecological cohesion, biodiversity, social sustainability and climate neutrality. As a living heritage, they express the history we share and a specific geographical identity. Above all, they are meeting places, for walking, recreation or just to enjoy for their own sake.

Designing green spaces

The bachelor programme in landscape and garden architecture shapes designers of green spaces, of gardens, parks or squares, of recreational areas, forest playgrounds or rural brook valleys, as well as green connections on industrial estates, urban green climate axes, and so on. Designing is a creative, investigative and solution-oriented process in which you look for the right combinations between aesthetics and functionality, with sustainability as a starting point. As a designer, you give content – identity, inspiration, meaning – to our environment, which far transcends the strictly material.

Your own perspective

The heart of the programme is in the design studios, where students actively and concretely get down to work. Realistic design issues bring you into contact with the working field of landscape and garden architecture. In small groups with individual guidance, and in collaboration and consultation with clients – owners, government authorities, diverse interest groups – you learn to think spatially. In this process, you learn to analyze and synthesize design assignments in order to arrive at your own critical and well-substantiated vision of a specific undeveloped space. The range of projects is diverse and grows in complexity throughout the programme. With such partial aspects as hardened surfaces, structures and planting, you gain practical experience as you work in the design studios.

Theory flanks practice

The practical training is flanked by course units that provide a theoretical framework in order to reflect critically on the assignments and provide knowledge to be able to carry them out. Theory is always directed towards practice and is concretely offered in the form of lectures, working sessions, guest lectures, practical assignments and excursions. Digital and manual visualization techniques help you to put your research process and its results on paper, and create images that have an inspiring effect. Landscape and garden architecture is also placed in both a current and an historical cultural perspective. In addition, several other course units enhance your ecological, technical and plant knowledge. Such segments as field work exploration and communications, or business management and entrepreneurship, prepare you for the professional working field. Finally, during the course of the programme, there are a range of study visits to inspiring projects, both in Belgium and abroad, to plant and tree nurseries, arboreta, and so on.

As a part of the development of your own personal practice, you can, in part, determine your own study programme through elective subjects and workshops. You can also decide on your own graduation design project, based on your personal interests. Your studies will be completed with an internship in a landscape design agency or a public service department in Belgium or abroad, or another leading organization. You will also complete your bachelor thesis project, a complex design assignment in which you – with your teacher as a guide – take control of your own design process.

No specific prior education or specific prior knowledge is required to start the landscape and garden architecture programme. A love of all things living and green and a good dose of creativity will suffice. The landscape and garden architecture programme will shape you into a professional who is prepared for the employment market in Belgium or abroad. With this training, you can work in the private sector, for a design or research studio, or you can start your own independent business. Or you can develop a career in the public sector – with the parks or planning departments of a municipality or city, a province, the Flemish Region or wherever you choose.

As a landscape and garden architect, you will be called upon to produce original designs, to prepare plans for implementation, or as a project leader to guide their realization in the right direction. You could also serve in licensing policy, drawing up park or management plans, or advising on policy matters. In many cases, you will be part of a multidisciplinary team of landscape and garden architects, architects and urban planners, biologists, bio-engineers and so on.

After graduation

Those who want to continue studying after completing this programme can also follow KASK & Conservatorium’s unique advanced bachelor programme in Landscape Development. This one-year programme focuses on the landscape and how landscape can be developed through spatial design. It further forms competent professionals who have the analytical and synthetic abilities to read the landscape independently and critically, and to make creative and motivated design proposals based on their findings.

You can also choose – whether you pursue additional bachelor work or not – to continue your studies in associated master programmes, such as urban and spatial planning, heritage studies or landscape architecture.