The Bachelor of Urban Design and Landscape Architecture is a four-year undergraduate program delivered entirely in Turkish at leading faculties of architecture and fine arts, designed to train creative and technically proficient professionals who can shape livable, sustainable, resilient, and beautiful cities, neighborhoods, public spaces, parks, waterfronts, urban regeneration areas, and ecological landscapes in a country experiencing one of the fastest urbanization rates in the world, massive post-earthquake reconstruction needs, and a growing demand for green, human-centered urban environments.Throughout the program students acquire an interdisciplinary, project-based skill set that combines urban design thinking, landscape architecture principles, ecological planning, and digital design technologies at the highest level. They master urban design studio work from neighborhood-scale interventions to metropolitan master plans, landscape design for parks, botanical gardens, urban forests, green corridors, and therapeutic gardens, planting design and ecological restoration, open-space systems and public realm planning, urban regeneration and brownfield redevelopment, climate-responsive and resilient design strategies, water-sensitive urban design and sponge-city principles, GIS and parametric urban analysis, 3D modeling and visualization with Rhino, Grasshopper, Lumion, Enscape, and Twinmotion, site planning and grading, hardscape and street furniture design, participatory planning and community engagement techniques, landscape construction and materials, history and theory of urbanism and landscape architecture from Ottoman gardens to contemporary global practices. Students work on real projects with municipalities, metropolitan planning offices, and private developers, participate in national and international urban design competitions that regularly win awards, complete long-term internships at leading offices (Türkerler Urban Design, DS Architecture, Soho Landscape, EAA Emre Arolat, Teğet, Superpool, Salon Architects, ONZ Architects, Kreatif Architects, İki Design), public institutions (Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality Parks and Gardens Directorate, Ministry of Environment and Urbanization, İller Bankası, TOKİ), and landscape contractors, and graduate with a professional portfolio that includes built or under-construction public space projects and competition-winning designs.Graduates of the Bachelor of Urban Design and Landscape Architecture enjoy outstanding employment rates and play a central role in Turkey’s urban transformation. They are immediately recruited as urban designers, landscape architects, master-plan coordinators, public-space specialists, and ecological planners by top-tier design offices, metropolitan municipalities (Istanbul, Ankara, İzmir, Antalya, Bursa), Ministry of Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change, TOKİ, Emlak Konut, large-scale mixed-use developers (Rönesans, Nef, Sur Yapı, Ağaoğlu), international planning consultancies (Arup, AECOM, SWA Istanbul offices), landscape construction companies, botanical gardens, and tourism investment projects. Many graduates open their own boutique studios within a few years or join international practices in Europe, while others continue to master’s programs in Europe and the USA with full scholarships. The profession commands growing social prestige because these young designers directly improve quality of life for millions by creating greener, cooler, more walkable, and disaster-resilient cities that are urgently needed after the 2023 earthquakes and in the face of climate change. Starting salaries are among the highest in the design disciplines and rise rapidly with project scale, international experience, and competition success, enabling most graduates to reach solid upper-middle-class income within five years and elite status for those leading signature public-space projects or winning prestigious national and international competitions. In essence, the Bachelor of Urban Design and Landscape Architecture offers a deeply creative, socially vital, and future-defining education that empowers its graduates to heal and re-imagine Turkey’s cities for generations to come.
