Show and tell

5 Jan 2012

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In 2012, we will be redoubling our efforts to spread the message about landscape architecture and the benefits it brings. It has all the makings of a great year in terms of the story we have to tell.  

The Olympic park will be opening to the public after the Games are over and people will be able to experience a successful landscape-led scheme on a scale they may never have encountered before. As an official partner organisation of the Olympic Learning Legacy, the Landscape Institute will be working to ensure that the public do more than just enjoy the magnificent environment that has been created in the Lea Valley – it is important that people understand that the project was landscape-led and why this made everything else work so well.

In September, we will once again be a partner in London Open City. Last year, 50 site visits and walking tours were offered by LI registered practices as part of the weekend programme. More than a quarter of a million people took part in Open City, which delivers informal design education to local communities so that they are more informed about design, procurement and planning processes. Of the people that took part, 38 per cent said it had made them think about how their own area could be improved, while 68 per cent said that Open House had given them a better appreciation of the value of well-designed public spaces and landscapes. 

At the moment, London is the only UK city in the Open City network, but the idea of a weekend of events that enables people to explore places in their city they would not otherwise see is one that landscape architects can readily adapt to other places. If there is an architecture festival in your town, you might be able to contribute some events to it.  Birmingham, for example, has a ‘Big City Culture Strategy’, which desperately needs food landscape architecture input, and Derry/Londonderry is to be the first ever UK City of Culture, though not till 2013.

All successful promotional activity depends on interesting and up-to-date case studies. Showing people landscape architecture is much more effective than telling them about it. We can literally never have too many case studies and the more we have the better we can showcase what the profession does. A major new collection of case studies is due to be published in the next couple of months when we release our new 2012 Client Guide, which will contain more than 30 exemplar projects from LI members around the world. 

Sadly, many of our registered practices have not yet taken the opportunity to flaunt what they’ve got by contributing case studies of their work to our library, which means they are disadvantaged when clients search the register looking for a landscape architect. Check your practice out and if you don’t have a case study up yet, make it a late new year’s resolution to add some.

Lastly, we’d like to support our practices by helping them obtain the maximum publicity for successful projects. If you are nearing completion on something really interesting, have just won a competition or have an exciting story to share about landscape architecture, please let our communications director Paul Lincoln know so that we can generate some coverage in the press for you.

*Above illustration: At the heart of King’s Cross Central in London is the new campus for the University of the Arts, London. Granary Square designed by Townshend Landscape Architects will be opening later this year.

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