About the School of Architecture and Landscape

The School of Architecture and Landscape was formed in 2024 as the result of a merger between the School of Architecture and the Department of Landscape Architecture. The school sits high up in one of Sheffield's most recognisable buildings - the Arts Tower. Offering unrivalled views across our green city and beyond, the Arts Tower’s light and airy studios promote collaborative working and a sense of community.

Through our teaching, research and partnerships we engage with social, political, economic and technical challenges. Our staff and students work with a range of partners including local community groups, charities, health organisations and regional authorities, to develop practical solutions to real world challenges.

Our global community of alumni practise in more than 70 countries worldwide. They include some of the leading names in the fields of architecture and landscape architecture, and regularly return to Sheffield to deliver guest lectures and workshops.

Courses and accreditation

We educate our students to be knowledgeable, open, enquiring and critically aware. This will enable them to lead and change the profession over the next 50 years.

Accreditation guarantees a high standard of education and ensures that our students are equipped with cutting-edge skills.

All of our undergraduate landscape architecture degrees are fully accredited by the Landscape Institute and the International Federation of Landscape Architects. We offer specialist options in Landscape Management and Planning at both Undergraduate and Postgraduate levels. 

We offer a wide range of professional as well as academic degree programmes in architecture, and our professional courses are fully accredited by the Architects Registration Board (ARB) and the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA).

Vision 

The School of Architecture and Landscape is defined by the curiosity, values and expertise of its staff and student community, and aims to make a positive difference to research and practice in our professions.

Our School seeks to develop collaborative, informed and ethical architectural and landscape responses to complex social and environmental challenges. We want our students to be inspired by this, recognising their own potential to develop skills and knowledge, as well as empathy and leadership. Student achievement is supported by the breadth and global relevance of our research agenda, educational innovation, strong links with practice and practitioners, and the dedication and friendliness of our staff. Our hope is that connections tested in the Arts Tower – between rigour and creativity, practice and theory, architecture and landscape, debate and reflection – provide our students with a rich experience and prepare them well for their future careers.

Ambitions 

The School of Architecture and Landscape can be characterised by eight ambitions which  reflect our commitments to:

• excellence in design practice and theory informed by world-leading research, and 
• research agendas responsive to the contemporary social, environmental and technical challenges addressed by architects and landscape architecture professionals.

The first five ambitions are positioned here as foundational and central to design, education and research in architecture and landscape at Sheffield.

Climate. We accept the leadership needed within architecture and landscape research and professional education to generate the innovative, holistic, critical approaches to spatial design necessitated by the climate emergency.

Culture. We seek to better understand the multiple and nuanced ways in which histories and cultures shape values in built and natural environments and professional practices, and recognise tensions of whose voices are represented or excluded in these debates.

Ecology. We are committed to working within processes of ecology not only as an environmental concern but as a foundational principle that links landscape and architecture through systems of interdependence, regeneration and care.

Material. We are thoughtfully engaged with what and how we build and plant, willing to challenge normative practice and material cultures,  and take vital decisions to reduce embodied carbon, do more with less, advocate for retrofitting and site responsiveness, and learn from locally held scientific and technical knowledges.

Place. We are inspired and committed to the ‘here’ of Sheffield, our legacy and ongoing engagement with places in this city, and the global resonances and connections our practice can make between the many ‘elsewheres’ and northern England.

The second set of ambitions reflect our disciplinary commitments and values: 

Inclusivity. We strive to be intentional in understanding how social inequalities are replicated and experienced in designed built and natural environments, and in the dismantling of ongoing barriers and inequalities to participation in our professions, research and higher education.

Liveness. We equip our students with meaningful skills and participatory processes to design with people, not for people; embedding into our educational values varied approaches to enhance community capacity and resilience and shaping collective aspirations for future places.

Justice. We recognise that architects and landscape architects have a responsibility to support democratic and equitable participation in place change, and that working for socio-spatial justice and decolonisation are vital core commitments within architecture and landscape practice and theory.