April was designated as World Landscape Architecture Month by the International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA) last year when the inaugural event was held. Landscape architects from many of the 61 (now) associations worldwide joined to provide events in their countries that highlighted global issues.
The first event was launched in Beijing China, by the Chinese Society of Landscape Architects.
This year three additional countries, Ireland, Spain and Portugal will join their professional colleagues from countries such as Iceland who celebrate the start of summer on 1 April to landscape architects in Uruguay and South Africa. Landscape architects in New Zealand will hold a conference and their biennial ‘Pride of Place’ awards presentation at the start of April. Other events are now being planned.
The largest two landscape architecture associations (ASLA and LI) will focus their activities on recruitment of students in April. In both the United States and Great Britain more practitioners are retiring than are emerging as graduates from universities. At the same time demand is growing in the United States for professional services by 20% a year and firms with high work loads are ‘shopping’
According to Dr. Diane Menzies, IFLA’s president “This is an opportunity for our passionate profession of landscape architecture to show what they are doing and involve groups they work with around the world. Landscape architects work with issues at the global scale such as mitigating climate change and repairing and rehabilitating landscapes after disasters such as the Asian Tsunami, to smaller scale protection of waterways and designing city plazas.”
For further information, please contact Christine Bavassa - efla.exsec@gmail.com
