BILKENT LAUD · EST. 1991
urban design and
landscape architecture
Since 1991, Bilkent LAUD has been Turkey's pioneer in educating the next generation of designers who shape
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39°51′59″n · 32°44′59″ebilkent · ankara
Since 1991, Bilkent LAUD has been Turkey's pioneer in educating the next generation of designers who shape
Bilkent LAUD is the first and pioneering undergraduate program in Turkey bringing together urban design and landscape architecture. Since 1991, we train future designers who make a lasting impact on our cities, landscapes, and the lives they make possible.
With a multidisciplinary faculty spanning design, ecology, and the social and computational sciences, Bilkent LAUD's curriculum is built around enhancing the quality of life in tomorrow's urban spaces and landscapes. Students are grounded in local contexts through fieldwork and direct interaction with communities and urban actors. Our graduates leave design-oriented, ecologically grounded, socially responsive, and digitally fluent, ready to reimagine and shape the environments we all share.
Four years of studio culture where ideas are built, tested, and challenged through making.
We train designers with ecological intelligence who work with natural systems, not against them.
Engaging with communities and urban actors to address real-world problems on the ground.
Our graduates enter practice fluent in the digital tools and workflows shaping the profession today.
We aim to equip our students for the complexity of urban and landscape practice through a design-oriented education integrating ecological, social, and digital intelligence.
Studio-based design education is the foundation of Bilkent LAUD. From the first year, students learn by designing, making, and critiquing in the studio, supported by technical courses that build professional competence and theoretical courses that sharpen critical thinking. As part of the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture, our students benefit from an interdisciplinary community of instructors spanning landscape architecture, urban planning and design, architecture, fine arts, graphic communication, and computational design.
The learning experience at Bilkent LAUD is grounded in the real world. Field trips, local urban explorations, and international collaborations take students to the sites and communities they design for. Two compulsory internships, one in professional design practice and one in ecology and botanics, ensure graduates arrive in the field with direct experience at both ends of the discipline. This commitment to learning beyond the studio ensures students graduate not only as skilled designers but as informed, engaged professionals.
Courses and CurriculumRead More
Design Studio CultureRead More
Internships and PracticeRead More
Laboratorio del Cammino:
Italian Summer SchoolRead More
Exchange ProgramsRead More
What Students MakeRead MoreCourses and CurriculumRead MoreInternships and PracticeRead MoreLaboratorio del Cammino:
Italian Summer SchoolRead MoreExchange ProgramsRead MoreWhat Students MakeRead MoreCourses and CurriculumRead MoreDesign Studio CultureRead MoreInternships and PracticeRead MoreLaboratorio del Cammino:
Italian Summer SchoolRead MoreExchange ProgramsRead MoreWhat Students MakeRead MoreOur multidisciplinary team of faculty members and instructors bring together decades of expertise in design education, practice, and academic research.
Studio projects, student awards, faculty research, and events from the Bilkent LAUD community.
Bilkent LAUD student Ece Beyza Özdemir earned third place at the national GYODER "Designs That Touch the City" competition with her studio project on reuniting nature and urban space in Northern Cyprus.
The second edition of the LAUD Urban Photography Contest, held during the Gaziantep studio trip, announced its winner: Atlas Ada Çelik, a 2nd-year student.
The 25th Barış Eyikan Kılınç Graduation Project Competition results were announced, with Heyem Nisan Yiğit taking first prize.
Student teams from six faculty departments created artworks during Leukemia Children's Week to support LÖSEV, including a piece by LAUD students Zeynep Esra Sarı and Elifsude Şimşek.
Bilkent LAUD participated as a sponsor in the "Living Ruins" competition organized by TerraViva, with faculty members Dr. Kumru Arapgirlioğlu and Hatice Karaca serving on the jury.
The award ceremony of the Istanbul Land Walls Topkapı Square Urban Design Competition organized by the Planning and Project Directorate of Fatih Municipality took place on June 25, 2022.
The call for participants of the summer school SoAVe: walking in the landscapes of energy production opens — an inter-university research initiative on landscape transformation.
Results of the Adana 5 Ocak Park and Surroundings Urban Design Competition are announced, with the LAUD team receiving third place.
A LAUD Talks seminar co-organized with the Department of Architecture at TED University brought together researchers exploring architecture and climate at the water's edge.
Ezgi Aydın, senior LAUD student, received the winner's award for the BLIS Herb Garden Design Competition.
Duncan Denley and Nichal Jacob Rajan of desert INK, an award-winning Dubai-based landscape architecture practice, delivered a presentation titled Context-Driven Landscapes.
Bilkent LAUD announces a department-wide student competition for the design of a herb garden for Bilkent Laboratory and International School (BLIS).
RecycLand is the 4th edition of the walking Summer School promoted by Laboratorio del Cammino — an inter-university network exploring the methodological contribution of walking in urban planning and design.
Responding to a request from NGOs in Batıkent, LAUD undertook an experimental urban design process spanning both semesters of the 2019–2020 academic year.
The XXXIst Barış Eyikan Kılınç Urban Design and Landscape Architecture Student Competition took place online on 26 June 2020.
The exhibition narrates the unrealized story of the Capital Ankara during the Early Republican Period through the professional approach of architect-urbanist Leon Jaussely.
Extremes Studio, led by Deniz Baykan and Hatice Karaca, worked on the Bodrum Peninsula in Spring 2019 and presented their findings in a public exhibition.
Cities and Islamisms: The Politics and the Production of Architecture will take place on October 4, 2019 at Bilkent University.
The evaluation for the 20th iteration of the Barış Eyikan Kılınç Urban Design and Landscape Architecture Student Design Competition took place on June 25, 2019.
LAUD hosted a seminar on how urban refugees navigate borders of race, space, and policy, delivered by Assoc. Prof. Jamie Lew and Prof. Mara Sidney.
LAUD hosted Prof. Sam Olin for a seminar on sustainability as both a pedagogical framework and a design practice.
Prof. Dr. Billur Tekkök Karaöz delivered a seminar tracing the landscape history of Ankara from the Roman period through the early Republican era.
Burcu Ateş and Merve Başak presented on the EU-funded Rethinking 100. Yıl project, exploring urban memory and participatory planning in Ankara.
Kerem Yazgan, co-founder of Yazgan Design Architecture, delivered a seminar on the Hamamyolu Urban Deck project in Ankara.
Prof. Dr. Ruşen Keleş delivered a seminar on legal and ethical frameworks in urban planning, drawing from decades of scholarship in Turkish urbanism.
Students of Studio Continuum visited Sarıyer, İstanbul for fieldwork led by faculty members Kumru Arapgirlioglu and Didem Dizdaroglu.
Faculty members Didem Dizdaroglu and Hatice Karaca presented a poster at the European Council of Landscape Architecture Schools conference in Ghent, Belgium.
The jury of the XIXth Barış Eyikan Kılınç Urban Design and Landscape Architecture Student Design Competition convened to evaluate student submissions.
LAUD's Extreme Studio visited Kartal, İstanbul for an intensive fieldwork session exploring urban transformation along the eastern waterfront.
A workshop on sustainable campus design organized by LAUD in collaboration with Imam Abdulrahman bin Faisal University.
