MSD sees success at the 2020 AILA Vic Awards
Congratulations to Associate Professor Jillian Walliss, Professor Gini Lee and Antonia Besa, alongside their colleagues, for having their work celebrated and awarded at the 2020 Australian Institute of Landscape Architecture (AILA) Victoria Awards.
Jillian Walliss, alongside collaborators Kirsten Bauer and Cassandra Chilton, were awarded a Landscape Architecture Award in the Research Policy and Communication category for the Future Park International Design Competition.
As noted by AILA Victoria in their report, “the jury commended the Future Park Competition as an effective advocacy and communication initiative which has bought public and political visibility, and attention to big issues and bold ideas for public space. The project demonstrates how the interest and imagination of the wider public and mainstream media can be engaged to raise the profile of landscape architecture and awareness of the importance of public space to the health of Australian cities and centres.”
Speaking on behalf of the three winners, A/Prof Jillian Walliss said ‘we are delighted to have been recognised by our peers and the public for The Future Park Competition. The success of the competition and the recognition through this award has revealed how an ideas competition attracts the interest and imagination of the community and mainstream media, offering a valuable profile raising strategy for landscape architecture and the importance of public space in Australian cities.’
Professor Gini Lee and Antonia Besa received an Award of Excellence in Research, Policy and Communications for their work ‘WaterLore: Learning From the Drylands’, exhibited at the Melbourne School of Design in 2019.
As noted by AILA Victoria in their report, “WaterLore: Learning from the Drylands is a significant work that has created a vehicle for design thinking to contribute to transdisciplinary water knowledge and data. This is a compelling and important project that has the ongoing potential to enrich knowledge of, and play a role in building shared understanding and values for, the management of water in a drying landscape.”
In response to the award Prof Gini Lee remarked “Antonia Besa and I are extremely gratified to have our WaterLore research and mapping acknowledged by our peers in AILA. The Award of Excellence recognises the importance of undertaking long term fieldwork in contributing to recording the cultural and natural dynamics of large and complex environments. This attention to site then allows for communicating both the beauty and wicked issues inherent in climatically changing landscapes through intensive mapping utilising digital and analogue data and media. Our guiding premise is that if we want to learn to exist in a drying world, then we can look to learn from dry country water practices. We are now enabled to keep on working with intersecting hotspots on dryland river systems to engage landscape architecture with communities tasked with re-imagining their water landscapes.”
Our congratulations are also extended to Tanja Beer and the team at Clean Air and Urban Design Hub, along with many others, for receiving an Award of Excellence in Community Contribution for ‘The Living Pavilion’, held at the University of Melbourne and supported by the Melbourne School of Design.
The AILA Landscape Architecture Awards program provides a key vehicle for the promotion of the achievements and work of landscape architects in Victoria. The Awards process is an opportunity for public and peer recognition of landscape architect’s work, and demonstrates to industry, business, government and the wider community the positive impact the profession has on Australian lives through the planning and design of the built and natural environments.