Dr. Kongjian Yu is invited as keynote Speaker to Address to the IFLA Eastern Region Conference

The International Federation of Landscape Architects Eastern Region Conference will be held in Sydney, Australia on 25-27 May 2006. The theme of the Conference is "TIME". This three-day event is organized by the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects and the New Zealand Institute of Landscape Architects, in partnership with the University of New South Wales Faculty of the Built Environment. Dr. Kongjian Yu, The founder of the Graduate School of Landscape Architecture at Peking University, the founder and president of Turenscape is invited as one of the keynote speakers for the Conference, together with other leading international practitioners and academics: Kathryn Gustafson, Astrid Haryati, Elizabeth k. Meyer and Martha Fajardo. Delegates will be welcomed from IFLA member countres around the world, including thoses of the Eastern Region: Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, the Republic of Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand. The conference will open with a public lecture and end with a gala dinner and incorporate addresses to ensure an exciting and memorable Sydney experience. [url=http://www.iflaonline.org/news/ifla_time.pdf]download the conference brochure here[/url] Lecture Abstract: Positioning Landscape Architecture in the New Era: Based on The Chinese Experience Kongjian Yu The Graduate School of Landscape Architecture, Peking University Abstract: In a new era with multiple unprecedented challenges imposed by the industrialization and urbanization processes, and along with the disappearance of the Land of Peach Blossoms that we inherited from our agricultural, the profession of landscape architecture is now at the edge of change. It is the time for this profession to take the great opportunities to position itself to play the key role in rebuilding a new Land of Peach Blossoms for a new society of urbanized, globalized and inter-connected society. In order to position itself for this sacred role, landscape architecture must recover itself as an art of survival but not as descendent of gardening, must revalue the vernacular of the land and people, and must lead the way of urban development by planning and designing the ecological and landscape infrastructure, through which landscape can be created and preserved as a medium and as an connecting bend that bring the land, people and spirits together again.