Keynote Speaker, Klaus Bondam
Klaus Bondam was, until the end of last year, the mayor of environmental administration in the city of Copenhagen in Denmark.
He championed initiatives to transform Copenhagen from the ‘grey, dull and worn out city’ of 20 years ago to a city recognised as a world leader in sustainability.
He has been a strong and effective advocate for urban design initiatives aimed at making Copenhagen the world’s best urban environment by 2015.
He cites the work of urbanist Jan Gehl as being a key inspiration in achieving this goal. A bicycle enthusiast, he has been active in reducing traffic congestion in the city and in encouraging the use of cycles as an everyday means of transport through investing in cycling infrastructure. Bondam believes that an important solution to climate change rests with cities if they become actively involved in reducing carbon emissions.
Bondam, a former actor and theatre director is a compelling and entertaining speaker, who has shown that bringing about change, such as that in Copenhagen, requires political will and courage.
Keynote Speaker, Professor Richard Weller
Richard Weller is the Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Western Australia and the director of Room 4.1.3 Ltd, a landscape design company.
He has received numerous international design competition awards and his most well-known built work is the landscape design of the National Museum of Australia in Canberra. He consults as both a designer and reviewer of major projects.
Professor Weller will talk about his recent work analysing, from a landscape architectural perspective, the implications of Australia’s predicted 21st century population growth.
If current predictions become reality the infrastructure, housing, work and social opportunities which define Australia’s current quality of life will need to be doubled. The Australian dream of a house and garden in the suburbs has never been in greater demand and its sustainability never more tenuous.
In Weller’s view, the progressive city of the 21st century will be one that can adapt effectively to environmental limitations and infrastructural overload.
Creativity and new means of inspiring and affecting change will be needed and, according to Weller, landscape architecture is a profession well equipped to do this. Using Perth, Western Australia, as a case study, he will describe how a landscape architecture-led team, has been able to cut through planning bureaucracy and engage the community in a focused discussion about the future of the city.
‘Conference listener’, Chris Laidlaw
Chris Laidlaw, well-known to National Radio listeners for his Sunday Morning show, will be the ‘conference listener’, who will reflect on the topics and issues raised in the conference programme during the final session.
He has a reputation as a thoughtful and perceptive commentator. As well being a broadcaster, Chris has been a regional councillor with Greater Wellington Regional Council since 1998.
Conference committee chairperson Boyden Evans says the conference theme reflects the importance of landscape in so many ways.
“There are exciting design opportunities as well as contentious landscape issues and these involve numerous professions. There are also growing numbers of individuals and community groups who are becoming proactive and want to have a say in decisions affecting ‘their’ landscapes.
“And, it goes beyond that to the power of landscape as reflected in film, art and literature. Our speakers include film director Vincent Ward, photographer Wayne Barrar and visual artist Kingsley Baird who all use landscape as an important symbol of culture and identity in their work.
We will also be hosting, on the evening preceding the conference, the launch of a book, Beyond the Scene; Landscape and Identity in Aotearoa New Zealand, in which contributors write about landscapes that are important to them.”
For more about the conference see: http://www.thepoweroflandscape.co.nz