Five new members have been elected as fellows by the board of the Landscape Institute.

Val Kirby
Val Kirby is one of five fellows newly elected by the Landscape Institute

The designation Fellow of the Landscape Institute (FLI) is conferred upon senior members of the profession in recognition of their talent, expertise and particular contribution to landscape architecture.Through its award of fellowships, the LI seeks to recognise its leaders, innovators and ambassadors and those who have made a special contribution to the development and promotion of the profession.

The new fellows, who will formally receive their certificates at the Landscape Institute Awards in November, are John Flannery, Dr Val Kirby, Dick Longdin, Peter Neal and Adam White.

John Flannery ia principal consultant and head of the UK and Ireland landscape and visual team at Environmental Resources Management, who has for many years been an examiner and supervisor on the institute’s Pathway to Chartership scheme. A landscape architect for 27 years, working on projects nationally and internationally, he is also the Europe, Africa and Middle East regional lead for the Planning and Design Practice, part of a global strategy to encourage collaboration in experience and methodologies across the technical teams. John has been a supervisor for the Pathway to Chartership and also an examiner for the Landscape Institute for the past few years. ‘Being awarded a fellowship is the culmination of an enjoyable and rewarding career in landscape architecture,’ he said. ‘It provides additional status in the construction and environmental industry and raises the profile of both the individual and the Institute.’

The fellowship admissions board praised Flannery for having made a significant contribution to thinking on environmental assessment, ‘through international practice and dissemination’, and noted his important input into the third edition of the LI’s guidance on the subject.

Val Kirby was until recently principal specialist, professions and communities at Natural England. The board remarked that, throughout her career in practice and academia, she has made a strategic contribution to thinking and policy making on matters concerning landscape classification and evaluation, most recently in relation to the UK response to the European Landscape Convention.

She is, she says, delighted and honoured to have been made a fellow: ‘I have just retired from Natural England and it was always my intention to spend more time working with the LI if I could. Being a fellow gives me added incentive to do whatever I can to continue to support the profession and, of course, landscapes everywhere.’

The admissions board noted that Peter Neal, of Peter Neal Consulting, has practised at a very high level in both the UK and abroad ‘as his prize-winning projects demonstrate’. He is said to have promoted his work in a scholarly manner through journal articles, ‘which show the quality of his creative ability and which also encourage students of landscape architecture to refer to them as radical design precedents’.

It also commented on Peter’s contribution to ‘more routine matters’, as a member of the professional review group for programme at the University of Greenwich.

Dick Longdin, partner at Randall Thorp Landscape Architects, was praised too for having practised at a high level for many years. This is reflected, the board noted, by the Cambourne New Settlement, which won an LI local landscape planning award in 2010. ‘In this project a major development has been shaped by a strategic landscape framework with the landscape architect as lead player.’

Dick has also been, for many years, an LI examiner and supervisor on the Pathway to Chartership scheme.

Commenting on the fifth newly elected fellow, Adam White of Davies White, the board said that he has ‘advanced thinking on provision for children’s recreation through the development of ideas about natural play’. Adam also established the UK Landscape Architects Forum within Groundwork, ‘which has helped to raise and regularise professional standards of the organisation throughout the UK’.

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