IFLA World Congress 2024 – ‘Code Red’

Meeting up with attendees during this autumn’s annual IFLA World Congress has been inspiring. Istanbul is a bustling city, developing at high speed where Europe and Asia meet. The incredible historic city, found west of the Bosporus Straits, has low-rise architecture from wooden houses to refined and highly articulated Ottoman architectural heritage, ranging from domestic environs to mosques and palaces. Though lacking in public greenspace, Istanbul has a few formal open spaces but they’re highly curtailed due to the enormous numbers of tourists and local people enjoying the spaces between the famous mosques. To the north is the financial centre around Taksim Square while its wider environs is strewn with a large plethora of erratic skyscrapers, similar to the eastern part of Istanbul across the straights. Turkey is a vast country with  an incredible horticultural industry with highly professional nurseries, large horticultural exhibitions, landscape companies and an increasing cohort of landscape architects trained at approximately 20 Turkish universities.

The conference was held in the Istanbul Conference Centre – a vast facility able to host over 800 delegates from 52 nations. Delegates witnessed cutting-edge presentations from six keynote speakers and nine invited special guests. Over 300 presentations and eight roundtables were on offer including representatives from various UN agencies, international allied professions and national stakeholders.

The Conference theme ‘Code Red’ was seen as an outcry for humanity to take a strong lead in looking for a sustainable and resilient future – in this moment, a platform for advocacy and what good and informed landscape design and management could achieve.

One of the top guest lectures was given by James Corner, winner of the Sir Jellicoe Award 2024, the highest honour IFLA can bestow for landscape architects. As the award highlights: “James Corner is without question one of the most important and influential landscape architects practicing today. With his professional and theoretical work James Corner has made significant and innovative contributions to the field of landscape architecture.” James is an international intellectual leader in landscape and mixes landscape with ecology well. He spoke about his work and philosophy around landscape and people. He was incredibly inspirational whilst highlighting his and his company’s ethos. His talent in art and creativity is well known but also his special way of conceptualising and visualising – giving insight on using imagination and landscape craft in such a poetic and enriching way.

He discussed case studies including the now famous New York High Line , which is inspiring similar projects globally, including in the UK with the National Trust’s experiment at the Manchester Castlefield’s Viaduct. He also made a particularly poignant emphasis around his appreciatiion for his and his staff’s work and thoughts responding to themes around the senses.

Dr. Maria Ignatieva was announced as the winner of the IFLA President’s Award 2024 which was presented in recognition of an outstanding individual who, through their voluntary efforts within IFLA, has made a fundamental difference to the global profession of landscape architecture. The award recognises her accomplishments as a true champion of landscape research around urban biodiversity, sustainable design and teaching, making an impact worldwide. In her acceptance speech, she illustrated her professional career in heritage gardens, ecological urban sustainability and designing with nature through ‘biodiversity-positive designs’ having worked in many continents. Currently, she is the Professor of Landscape Architecture at the School of Design at the University of Western Australia.

Kotchakorn Voraakkhom – a Thai landscape architect and chief executive officer of Porous City Network – was another keynote speaker describing her work in developing urban resilience in a well thought through, animated and interactive presentation highlighting Bangkok and its setting within a river delta increasingly prone to flooding.  As founder of the Porous City Network she highlighted the urgent need to tackle these flooding issues for affected, mostly poor, communities and unearthing the city’s canalised and culverted water ways and creating community spaces, which simultaneously act as temporary water storage during flood events. She is also exploring the beneficial usage of green roofs and is a restless entrepreneur, constant innovator and a strong advocate for more accessible green spaces in cities.

Lecture themes were many and included collaborative design for a planet in crisis, eco-emergency and global sustainability, global solidarity, innovative design, research and technical advances, considering healthy, happy people, building bridges – breaking barriers: education & practice, and in many cases recognising that landscape architecture is an industry in transition.

Many discussions were held and it was pleasing to see the next generation of young landscape architects, some even undertaking further studies in the UK. This provided a good opportunity to share UK academic training capacities.

Some presentations were given by LI members – including:

• Mike Wood FLI – Director of Landscape Architecture, ARUP – gave his thoughts around ‘sustainability in landscape’;
• Alexandra Steed FLI – founder of the practice URBAN – presented as an invited speaker and included an all-round approach under a ‘Portrait to Landscape: A Landscape Strategy to Reframe Our Future’ which explored land ownership, the need for indigenous leadership and reconnecting with nature. Also addressed was the question of why do we still support destructive farming and have an archaic development model, in which she also suggests that a radical rest is urgently required such as the need for beautiful and functional landscapes that are in harmony with the natural world;
• Julia Nerantzia Tzortzi FLI – Associate Professor at the Department of Architecture, Built Environment and Construction Engineering of the Politecnico di Milano – considered the ‘urban landscape co-design framework: linking participatory activities and landscape design’;
• Kathryn Moore CMLI IFLA & LI’s Past President, member of the International Landscape Convention Task Force (ILC) and Professor of Landscape Architecture at Birmingham City University, Kathryn contributed to a lecture on the theme of ‘climate action now: landscape architects designing for a resilient tomorrow’;
• Carolin Göhler FLI  – horticulturalist and landscape architect, as well as the current LI President, contributed to a panel lecture focused on ‘weaving cultural threads into a sustainable tapestry: cultural landscapes, natural landscapes, natural heritage and planetary rights’.

Next year’s 61^st IFLA World Congress will be held in Nantes, France 10-12 September 2025. Sign up to their newsletter to receive the latest updates. Contributions from landscape professionals in the UK and LI Members will be most welcome as we are recognised internationally as avant-garde. The following 62^nd IFLA World Congress will be in Hong Kong.

IFLA and its congresses are opportunities for UK landscape professionals to share thoughts, good practice and inspire others. We can make a difference by supporting many other professionals and their countries along their journeys to better tackle the climate change and biodiversity emergencies while creating better places for people and nature to thrive.