Student Travel Blog: Yushan Song

Having been awarded a Global Opportunities Travel Bursary worth £500, MA Landscape Architecture student Yushan Song spent ten days in January visiting renowned landscapes and buildings around Germany.

Yushan Song in Germany

Yushan shared with us a bit about how she benefitted from the award.

Tell us a bit about your experience.

My ten-day study tour in Germany - to Berlin, Cologne and Frankfurt - was really wonderful! Although the weather in Germany was not always good it was still really exciting to be able to visit my favourite landscapes and architectural works!

What did you learn from your visit?

I visited many famous landscapes and architectural designs, many of which I had studied in books and online, during my undergraduate course. But after visiting in person, I found out that we had ignored many details. My visit helped me better understand these designs and inspired me a lot.


"This study tour in Germany helped me understand landscape architecture from a different perspective, and I have benefited a lot!"

Yushan Song

MA Landscape Architecture


What impressed me most was the spatial experience of architecture and landscape and the application of materials.

The material and arrangement of the stone tablets in the memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe square give people a depressing feeling.

The concave terrain makes people enter the forest of stone tablets with the line of sight gradually blocked, until completely submerged in the stone tablets."

What about the landscapes you visited impressed you the most?

The space without clear orientation makes people feel depressed and confused.

The same design technique is also reflected in the Jewish Memorial Museum designed by D. Libeskind. The spaces on the ground floor of the building are irregularly folded, with intersecting corridors giving a lost feel, and the garden of exile uses stone tablets to achieve the same spatial effect.

Of all the places you visited, did you have a favourite?

The Kolumba Art Museum of the Cologne Archdiocese has always been my favourite design. The rough stone on the exterior of the building is in sharp contrast to the smooth bare concrete on the inside. The feeling of light on different materials is unlike anything I’ve experienced before.

In addition to these famous historical buildings, when I walked through the city, I noticed that many cities are people-friendly.

The width of streets, the height of buildings and the connections between various public spaces all affect the feelings of pedestrians. Visiting them has helped deepen my understanding of the spatial scale of urban streets.

This study tour in Germany helped me understand landscape architecture from a different perspective, and I have benefited a lot!

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