For those of you who joined us Minneapolis, I thank you, and I hope you had a pleasant return to your home cities. While at our 2023 Conference, ASLA Immediate Past President Emily O’Mahoney, FASLA, and I had the honor of welcoming to the general session stage IFLA President Bruno Marques. It was also a pleasure to have Bruno at our conference, since last month I had the honor of attending his conference.

In September, I traveled to Nairobi, Kenya for the IFLA World Council and the IFLA World Congress. Emily served as the ASLA delegate for the World Council gathering, standing in for Mark A. Focht, FASLA. ASLA VP of Communications Monique Bassey, ASLA, also attended the Congress as a session presenter, where she presented her research that used AI to recreate landscapes from the last century. It was a jam packed week in Nairobi, with a number of ASLA members in attendance at both locations.

The World Council gathering is the business meeting for IFLA’s governing body. We discussed everything from global awareness of the profession to professional standards. Kotchakorn Voraakhom, ASLA, discussed next steps for IFLA’s Climate Commitment, which is part of the foundation for ASLA’s Climate Action Plan. And Joy Mutai from UN Habitat presented together with Bruno about biodiversity efforts as they build socially and environmentally sustainable urban environments across the globe.

The World Congress was a joint simultaneous conference held in two locations–Nairobi and Stockholm. Presentations were broadcast across locations to the roughly 400 participants in Nairobi and 800 participants in Stockholm.

The Architectural Association of Kenya hosted the World Congress. The Association is a joint organization encompassing landscape architects and building architects, so there was strong participation across both professions.  

My presentation focused on our process for securing STEM designation. Afterwards, I heard from two groups of people–landscape architects practicing in countries who don’t have the designation and want to pursue it; and landscape architects practicing in countries that do recognize it as a STEM discipline, who described an easier path to leading projects than what many of our members are currently experiencing here.

With Mount Kilmanjaro as a stunning backdrop, it was inspiring to engage with African landscape architects who are in a much earlier phase of building the profession. The infrastructure challenges are immense, and these landscape architects have expertise in designing the solutions.
 
The 2024 IFLA World Congress is in Turkey, but the next stop is Dubai, where I will be this December for COP28, this year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference. There I will be carrying the flag for landscape architecture on two panels with Arch2030: Nature-based Solutions and the Built Environment: Designing for Resilience, Drawdown, and Biodiversity; and Scaling Up Nature-Based Solutions in Urban Environments.

I hope you all get to enjoy some downtime with family over the next few weeks. Happy Thanksgiving!