The Australian Institute of Landscape Architects (AILA) has announced the curatorial team for its inaugural Festival of Landscape Architecture, to be held in Brisbane 16–18 October 2014.
From the February callout for expressions of interest, Sharon Mackay and Di Snape were selected as the creative directors, with Dr Catherin Bull AM as advisor. As well as practice in landscape architecture, the creative team has extensive experience in curating and communicating design, design-led participatory engagement, exhibition design, and facilitation of design-thinking programs. Under the festival thematic of Forecast, they plan to deliver both a survey of current practice and a blueprint for broadening future interdisciplinary discussions and collaborations.
From the creative directors: “Forecast will be a survey of our professional terrain. It will be about seeking out the diverse ways that landscape architects are optimizing the strategic and collaborative capacity of their practice. Landscape architects have always engaged with the big issues of climate change, cities and environments. But the context is changing rapidly and the profession of landscape architecture is shifting. Now more than ever, landscape architects are working outside their traditional roles, shaping policy, testing new technologies and helping to solve complex issues through design. It will be a forum for a series of curated conversations between invited guests and festival delegates, and it’s sour intention that the festival will spark conversations and connections that migrate back into offices and projects around the country, setting the agenda for future directions of landscape architecture in Australia.”
About the creative team
Sharon Mackay is an award-winning landscape architect with eighteen years of collaborative practice in South Australia, Victoria and North America. Currently design director at the Office for Design and Architecture SA, she has directed design-led engagement projects of national significance such as 5000+ An Integrated Design Strategy and the Royal Adelaide Hospital (RAH) Site engagement process and design competition. Her work for Hassell, Terra Form Australis, was exhibited in the Australian Pavilion at the 2010 Venice Biennale. She is also host of the weekly Radio Adelaide program The Plan, a discussion on design, environment and effect.
Di Snape is design advisor for the Office for Design and Architecture SA (ODASA). She has designed and curated several significant public exhibitions including the Collaborative City exhibition (2012) and the Royal Adelaide Hospital (RAH) Site People’s Choice exhibition. After a twelve-year career in film and television production in Sydney, she also directed a number of short videos for ODASA and the Integrated Design Commission, documenting their projects and design-led engagement processes. She is the new producer of Radio Adelaide program The Plan.
Dr Catherin Bull AM is an emeritus professor of landscape architecture at the University of Melbourne and adjunct professor at Queensland University of Technology. She has led national and international consultancies in landscape architecture and urban design, been a commissioner in the Land and Environment Court of New South Wales and an academic for over twenty years – teaching, researching and supervising doctoral students, most recently as the Elisabeth Murdoch Professor of Landscape Architecture. She was made a member of the Order of Australia in 2009 for her contribution to landscape architecture and urban design.
