In 2020, we published the edited book The Big Asian Book of Landscape Architecture. While we were pleased with this research, we were acutely aware of the limitations of image and text, along with the use of English to present the culturally diverse work of Asian landscape architects. The Landscape Architects as Changemakers project emerged out of this frustration. The first stage of this bi-lingual project funded by the Toshiba International Foundation and Asia-link focused on Japan, replacing image and text with the expanded potentials of digital media explored through the production of four Japanese films. A further grant from the Australia-Japan Foundation expanded the project into a bi-lateral exhibition, matching the Japanese content with Australian.
During 2023, the Landscape Architects as Changemakers project was exhibited twice. The first exhibition opened in the Dulux Gallery at the Melbourne School of Design on 1 May 2023, as part of Melbourne Design Week. Associated events included bringing three Japanese landscape architects to Melbourne for three days of talks, presentations, and informal Australian socialising. The second exhibition opened on the 18th of November in Tokyo’s Kudan House, a unique Spanish mission-style villa constructed in 1926-7. Three Australian designers travelled to Tokyo to continue talks and presentations initiated in Melbourne.
This website offers documentation of both exhibitions, along with the full-length project films and recorded conversations with a further twelve Australian and Japanese landscape architects exploring critical issues facing practice including questions of professional and cultural identity, the design possibilities of working outside the city and the role of global connections.
The Landscape Architects as Changemakers project has been logistically and intellectually challenging, requiring extensive collaboration and organisation across two very different cultures. But the ability to disseminate and showcase work through film, exhibition and a website demonstrates a new way for thinking about academic research and its links to practice. At its heart is recognition of the value of the tacit knowledge of the designer, along with the power of digital media in revealing explicit and original design knowledge and presenting landscape architecture as an embedded cultural practice. For a more detailed discussion of the creative research methods underpinning the project see ‘Digital Media and the Design Project: New Creative Research Methods for Landscape Architecture’.
