Paul Albanese has taken over from Mike Wood as head of Edinburgh College of Art's postgraduate golf course architecture courses.

Albanese, a partner with American architecture firm Albanese & Lutzke, says he has enjoyed teaching since his days as a graduate student at Harvard University, and was intrigued by the idea of teaching golf course architecture at an art college. "There needs to be an integration between golf architecture, building architecture and the arts," he said. "Golf course architecture often seems to be an isolated discipline, and there wasn't a discourse between the two."

Albanese is creating that discourse at Edinburgh: "Sally Butler of the Landscape Architecture programme and I are talking about how to integrate the two courses," he says. "I'm also proud of the connection we've made with the sculpture department. Head of department Jake Harvey agreed to allow the golf architecture students to take sculpture. It allows them to really open up their brains to the sculptural aspects. It allows them to think on a different plain and gives them a whole new palette of ideas to draw from."

The course can be studied at postgraduate diploma and MSc levels. More information on the courses can be found at www.eca.ac.uk/eca.html.

This article first appeared in issue 4 of Golf Course Architecture, published in April 2006.