Last term, The Bartlett’s professionally accredited Landscape Architecture MA/MLA programmes moved to their new home at 77 Wicklow Street. The programmes were previously based in The Bartlett’s main central London site at 22 Gordon Street and briefly housed in a temporary space in Tottenham Court Road. The Landscape Architecture programmes respond to the need to work across built and natural environments to support sustainability and deal with real-world challenges such as biodiversity loss, climate change and ecological crisis. They are now situated in a single, dedicated building for teaching, learning and research.
The site
Spread over two floors, the building has two large open-plan design studios, as well as multiple breakout rooms for tutorials and seminars.
The ground floor accommodates a reception, lecture theatre, staff and research area, studio spaces, print room, seminar rooms, bike store, and kitchen. The lower ground floor houses a workshop space, further studio spaces, computer room, another kitchen, more seminar rooms and an exhibition space.
The site has allowed for the addition of a new B-made workshop space on the lower ground floor - the third of The Bartlett’s B-made workshops (with existing workshops at 22 Gordon Street and Here East). The new workshop has been specifically fitted out for the Landscape Architecture programmes. Its resources include woodworking tools, CNC machines, 3D printers and a Zund cutting machine to facilitate the quick fabrication of large-scale landscape models.
Impact on teaching and learning
MLA Year 1 Group Project
The open plan layout enabled the implementation of a new group design project in the first half of the term for incoming 2023-24 MLA Year 1 students, which was previously impossible due to space limitations and the department’s fragmented distribution across 22 Gordon Street. Students have been working in cross-studio groups creating large-scale models speculating on the future of UCL’s Wild Bloomsbury strategy. In addition to allowing students from different studios to work together, tutors across the programmes were able to integrate and mix, creating an open and collaborative atmosphere for the new academic year.
Inter-studio collaboration
During the first term at Wicklow Street, tutors held multiple cross-studio presentations, enabling students to present their projects to each other and receive feedback from outside of their main design studio groups. This offers new scope for students to learn from the breadth of work and expertise within the programme and to take an active part in peer-to-peer learning.
Skills workshops
Wicklow Street offers multiple spaces to run seminars and lectures as well as larger skilling workshops, classes and showcases to enable students to develop a comprehensive understanding of the ‘state of the art’ methods, and design strategies specific to landscape architecture design research, theory and practice. Skills such as physical and digital model making, film-making, animation, drawing and computational skills are delivered alongside specialist sessions on topographic manipulation botany and horticulture.
Landscapes in Dialogue Lecture Series and Film Night
The new facilities at Wicklow Street have also made it possible to hold in-person open events such as Landscapes in Dialogue, a series of informal talks involving practitioners and thinkers from landscape and a range of complimentary disciplines in conversations about work in progress, working methods and the process of working with landscape. The programme also offers film nights to widen the discussion with students about landscape architecture from various theoretical, esthetic, and political perspectives.
Feedback from students
Wicklow Street’s offering at a university the size of UCL is unique; your own desk within a wider studio environment, with storage and immediate access to a fully-equipped workshop just metres away. It really makes it easy to explore your ideas to their full potential. Its value in Central London certainly shouldn’t be underestimated.
– Sam Hammant, Landscape Architecture MLA Year 1
This is a place for exchange, discoveries and encounters!"
– Sophie Lai, Landscape Architecture MLA Year 2
Voices and ideas travel far in this studio space."
– Zoya Moshin, Landscape Architecture MLA Year 2
It's great to have our own workshop."
– Alice Carrington-Windo, Landscape Architecture MLA Year 2
More information
Images: Landscape Architecture MLA Year 1 Group Project
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