rush wright associates

LANDSCAPE FORUM 2026 DRAFT PROGRAMME COMING SOON On Tuesday the draft running proramme will be released, listing some of the people who have committed their valuable time to this free event. The programme will be updated weekly and also during the event by forum attendees, as needed. On Wednesday, URBIS are very kindly hosting an in-person get together with online access as well- see link in BIO. Please keep the offers of help coming in and please bring your stories. We're looking for tech help- please consider. Thank you.

Welcome ecoDynamics. Since 1989, ecoDynamics has been creating sustainable landscapes across VIC, SA, and NSW, delivering projects of all sizes — from major infrastructure to intimate green spaces. Their work would be familiar to many, for their role in delivering large scale projects in land rehabilitation, revegetation and land care. ecoDynamics handle every aspect of landscape works, from growing native plants, innovative planting and establishment solutions, creation of new landscape products as well as long-term maintenance and related advice. ecoDynamics play a lead role in building sustainable cities, linking design with installation techniques, maintenance and long-term regeneration. Thank you ecoDynamics for supporting the FORUM with a substantial contribution. We look forward to hearing more about your story too. B Corp impact ecoDynamics is proud to be a Certified B Corporation (B Corp), awarded to businesses that meet the highest standards of social and environmental performance, transparency, and accountability. B Corp assesses a company’s impact across seven key areas, ensuring that success is indexed against its positive contribution to people and the planet- and not just to profits. That sounds a lot like the FORUM. ecoDynamics’ work includes: FCA Main South Road Duplication • Robinson Road to Port Road, Aldinga, and Main South Road to McLaren Vale, South Australia • Client: Fleurieu Connections Alliance Scope All landscape works, supply and installation of 237,052 plants from the Penfield Nursery, hydromulching of dryland grasses, and use of a native seed hydromulch solution. Lake Eppalock Soil Rehabilitation • Lake Eppalock, Vic • Client: Lake Eppalock Holiday Park Scope Applied ProGanics and hydromulching using a site-specific seed blend across large areas of degraded land to support soil rehabilitation and revegetation outcomes. Union & Mont Albert Level Crossing Project • Location: Surrey Hills, Vic • Client: Level Crossings. Scope All soft landscapes, contributing to the enhancement of the public realm and its long term management.

And now a message from our launch sponsor, URBLO, who are sponsoring DAY ONE at the Trades Hall. URBLO provides design-led stone solutions for streetscapes and civil landscapes. Urblo links design and fabrication, technique and resolution, in a one-stop shop for quality stone trade and technology. Their service is built around a proven design collaboration and fabrication service/advice model that includes: • Taking the time to truly understand the design intent. • Deeply respecting the creative process. • Bringing cutting and fabrication skills to help deliver that vision on the ground. URBLO says, “A granite block doesn’t record a batch number; it records 300 million years of tectonic movement. A limestone block captures the memory of an ancient sea. Seeing diverse projects like West Side Place take shape, we aren’t just installing custom benches or paving. We are, in essence, sculpting spaces that will last over time. In a profession that has been stretched a little thin, finding partners who care as much about the integrity of the design as the health of our community is rare. Our support for the Landscape Forum isn't an advertisement; it’s an enabling act—ensuring the landscape disciplines have the time and space to gather, debate, and rebuild.” URBLO’s work sculpts stone to mark time. Linking the stone trades with designers at their desks. Read more about their story and philosophy at the link in bio. Thank you to everyone at URBLO. Image credits: 1,9 West Side Place Melbourne, @johngollingsphotography 2 & 4 Woolley Street Upgrade, Dickson ACT, AECOM, Matthew Sherren 3. Santa Maria College @marlonziebell #urb.lo @urb.lo

Rhiannon Saward has sent us all a public invitation ….link in bio. Link in Bio. LINK IN BIO 😊 - “Calling landscape architects, artists, scientists, horticulturists, work in your spare roomers, large and small practices, local and state government professionals, strategists, dreamers, builders, gardeners, students, graduates, teachers, once were LAs: We might be the most diverse profession, but I am sure that we are bound by similar values and principles that shape our everyday practice. It seems to me that we are at an exciting time in the profession – reputation and standing in the built environment founded on a strong body of work over the past decades, but now at a turning point, with new technologies, climates and ways of working, new ideas, new and emerging perspectives. As peers, and as individuals there is an opportunity to transform our connections and consider what is needed into the future. What do we need… what do you need to help create better ways of practice and strengthen our profession? The Forum has been created as a platform to hear these ideas, and as a place for conversation for ALL types of landscape architects. Together with my team at Urbis, we are hosting an online and in-person event to hear from the conveners of the Forum – The Forum - explained. The purpose of this ‘pre-event meeting’ is to understand what the Forum is, it's purpose and how it is a safe and equal space to share ideas, and how it could work. This pre-event meeting is open to all landscape architects (etc). Conveners include: Gini Lee, Cath Rush, Thomas Gooch and TBC Grant Revell and Yazid Ninsalam When and where: 13 May 2026, 4:30-6:30pm Urbis Wurundjeri Country Olderfleet, Level 10, 477 Collins Street Melbourne VIC 3000 Australia.” - Rhiannon Saward 6th May 2026

YES IT’S AN UNCONFERENCE Well sort of. In the great tradition of the forum, the event will create a form of village hall, with a mix of structured and unstructured time. We will loosely adopt the ‘4 Principles and 1 Law’ guidelines of “Open Space Technology” which will allow for a unique happening to, err happen. There will be a mix of live and video presentations, as well as agenda items proposed by everyone. You. Your friends and colleagues. The agenda won’t be all fixed, just some lunch breaks and some drinks after (sorry own cost). The 4 Principles are as follows, allowing for uncertainty and surprises: • Whoever comes is the right people • Whenever it starts is the right time • (Wherever it happens is the right place) • Whatever happens is the only thing that could have happened • When it’s over it’s over Hang on- that’s five, but we have already had to choose the right place. The right place seems to be the Trades Hall, what better place for conversation about hope and change. The one law is interesting. The Law of Two Feet says that “You, and only you, know when you are learning and contributing as much as you can.” It reminds us that “If you find yourself in a situation where you are neither learning or contributing, use your two feet, and/or whatever you use to get around, to go somewhere you can learn and contribute more.” This is akin to coming along with an open mind, and to be willing to accept difference, and to make it safer for everyone to speak. That alone will be the measure of our success, that everyone felt safe to speak. It is a high bar, but the law of two feet will be a condition of entry. We all have to feel safe to speak.

WHAT WE’RE READING – NO LOGO – LINK IN BIO YOU MIGHT NOT SEE THINGS YET ON THE SURFACE, BUT UNDERGROUND, IT’S ALREADY ON FIRE. Klein’s work will be familiar to many, and it still offers so much insight into ways to resist the invasion of the brands, the brand bullies who want to control our discourse. Klein went on to write “This Changes Everything, Capitalism vs. the Climate” in 2014. In 2018 she was named the inaugural Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair at Rutgers University and is now Honorary Professor of Media and Climate at Rutgers. In September 2021 she joined the University of British Columbia as UBC Professor of Climate Justice (tenured) and co-director of the Centre for Climate Justice. Her work offers a form of culture jamming on a large intellectual scale, enabling us all to access lines of thinking that can help restore critical insight and to open up debate. Klein is a columnist with The Guardian. NO SPACE. NO CHOICE. NO JOBS. NO LOGO. The Landscape Forum is indebted to her work. Naomi was invited to the Landscape Forum but has yet to return our calls and does not endorse the event. ‘When it was first published in Canada and the USA, just after some well-publicised demonstrations in Seattle against the World Trade Organisation in November 1999 put “anti-globalisation” on the international media agenda, No Logo flourished a polemical subtitle (“Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies”), and was hailed as a mix of radical journalism and a call to arms.’ - Robert McCrum, Guardian extract: 100 Best Nonfiction Image 6 credit: Justine Warrington from Flickr. #justinewarrington

REGISTRATIONS NOW LIVE – link in bio - FREE The Landscape Forum Collaborative announces that registrations are now available, see the link in bio. All events are free and self-catered. The FORUM is a two-day event planned for 4th and 5th of June. A proposed general meeting of the AILA may also happen on 6th June. LANDSCAPE FORUM 2026 Tell your stories. Nourish fresh futures. Make real changes. The FORUM will bring together people around Australia, and it is open to all who are involved in the discipline of landscape architecture. It is being held in person and on-line. The event will include practitioners in public and private practice, scholars, teachers, students, recent graduates, gardeners, contractors, craftspeople, writers and historians. The event is open to members and non-members and is being publicised as widely as possible. Over three days in June, those who care can help make history. TELL YOUR STORIES The FORUM is open to all, with an opportunity to share your story. Based around an open program of short presentations, happenings and other provocations, the first day is being crafted from this open call for submissions, from all States and Territories. This is an opportunity to hear from your country, and to create the agenda together. FRESH FUTURES We may all wonder “what just happened in landscape architecture” and this may well be discussed. But what do we all do now? What does the future look like for the discipline? How could the new Institute change in order to nurture a fresh future? Your views are keenly sought. Both in-person and online submissions will be available, including recorded, live, reels and tik toks. MAKE CHANGES A General Meeting is planned to follow the forum on Saturday June 6th. This event is being developed in parallel with the FORUM, with further details to follow very soon. Stay tuned, because the vote of AILA Members will be needed to give this meeting the power to make change. Images: Cover and gallery images of Trades Hall used with permission, a very big thank you to Pete Glenane (c) @hivispictures and Lovell Chen Architects @lovellchen

A LOT IS HAPPENING And we are very lucky to have John Gollings joining us as a launch sponsor. Expect to see John at the event, to record some of the action and to make more beautiful images like these. This will be a week of major announcements, enough to get the kangaroos dancing in the streets. Well maybe. John Gollings AM is one of Australia’s most respected and revered photographers. John Gollings first picked up a camera at the age of nine, falling in love with the process of photography. He continued snapping, Nikon F in hand, throughout his time at the University of Melbourne, where he formally studied architecture during the 1960s. After graduating with a Masters, he decided to pursue his self-taught hobby full‑time, stepping into the world of advertising and fashion photography. Meanwhile, his former architecture classmates gradually began to design and construct significant projects. ‘I was their go-to photographer’, explains Gollings. ‘I was really starting to shoot some pretty major architectural work in the late seventies. By the mid‑eighties, I had firmly committed to just photographing buildings.’ In 1976 Gollings received private tuition from Ansel Adams in his darkroom in Carmel, California. His catalogue of work quickly grew to include commissions from some of the world’s most recognised architects, including Le Corbusier, Glenn Murcutt and Harry Seidler. Alongside his commercial work, Gollings engages in personal projects concerned with architectural history and heritage. One of his most recent projects captured Nawarla Gabarnmang, an Indigenous rock shelter located in Arnhem Land. Dated at over 45,000 years old, the structure is the oldest human construction photographed by Gollings. John Gollings specialises in the documentation of cities, old and new, a lot of it from the air. He has had a particular interest in the cyclic fires and floods, which characterise the Australian landscape. Image: Kay Street Housing, Edmond and Corrigan, 77 Kay Street Carlton VIC, 1982. THANK YOU JOHN. Welcome to the FORUM

A LOT IS HAPPENING And we are very lucky to have John Gollings joining us as a launch sponsor. Expect to see John at the event, to record some of the action and to make more beautiful images. This will be a week of major announcements, enough to get the kangaroos dancing in the streets. Well maybe. John Gollings AM is one of Australia’s most respected and revered photographers. John Gollings first picked up a camera at the age of nine, falling in love with the process of photography. He continued snapping, Nikon F in hand, throughout his time at the University of Melbourne, where he formally studied architecture during the 1960s. After graduating with a Masters, he decided to pursue his self-taught hobby full‑time, stepping into the world of advertising and fashion photography. Meanwhile, his former architecture classmates gradually began to design and construct significant projects. ‘I was their go-to photographer’, explains Gollings. ‘I was really starting to shoot some pretty major architectural work in the late seventies. By the mid‑eighties, I had firmly committed to just photographing buildings.’ In 1976 Gollings received private tuition from Ansel Adams in his darkroom in Carmel, California. His catalogue of work quickly grew to include commissions from some of the world’s most recognised architects, including Le Corbusier, Glenn Murcutt and Harry Seidler. Alongside his commercial work, Gollings engages in personal projects concerned with architectural history and heritage. One of his most recent projects captured Nawarla Gabarnmang, an Indigenous rock shelter located in Arnhem Land. Dated at over 45,000 years old, the structure is the oldest human construction photographed by Gollings. John Gollings specialises in the documentation of cities, old and new, a lot of it from the air. He has had a particular interest in the cyclic fires and floods, which characterise the Australian landscape. Image: Kay Street Housing, Edmond and Corrigan, 77 Kay St, Carlton, VIC (1982). THANK YOU JOHN. Welcome to the FORUM.

FORUM. Two days of chat, followed by a general meeting Programming for the first two days is still in development, but the last day would be AILA members’ business, a place to formalise ideas from the forum into concrete resolutions to make change. This is work of the AILA membership, and it is why the company brand is used to identify it. A general meeting needs about 100 members to approve it, or 5% of the full membership. Signed support papers need to be received and these will be sent electronically. Once 5% support is in place, the meeting can be formalised with a mandate to propose formal resolutions. If we don’t get 5%, putting the issues to a debate could still be a great way to see if others agree with any ideas that develop, to be saved for later. Resolutions to change the Constitution also need 75% of members voting at the meeting to be held, so change is not easy, and members need to want to make change. This is the reason to have the Forum beforehand. At the event positions can be developed, common ground perhaps found, and where the numbers are right, ideas can become pathways to a different future. There will be ample unstructured time and a focus on active participation. The days will not be long, the events will not be boring*, and the work we do together may perhaps become history in the making. LANDSCAPE FORUM 2026. *money back guarantee @aila_national @aila.victoria @ailansw @vfresh_aila @ailafresh_nsw @aila_fresh_act @ailafresh_wa @qfresh_aila @landscapeau @architectureau @rush.wright.associates @__offcuts__

Join a group of gardeners and landscape architects, for short tours of the various farm landscapes and garden projects at Glenluce. Bookings on Eventbrite- link in Bio. Some highlights included from previous few weeks. Friday 24 April - open from midday 12:00 picnicking and wandering 14:00 tour(s) 16:00 local wine tasting (included), campfire 18:00 day trippers depart Camping on site (optional) Saturday 25 April - Anzac Day 06:00 dawn service event 08:00 cooked breakfast (included) 09:00 more wandering or dozing, random plant ID quiz 10:00 optional 4WD tour (byo fuel), there are some great tracks nearby optional gardening fun for those who wish optional walking and actual exercise Festivities conclude about midday Happy to take any queries Cath and Michael 0428 784401 Proceeds to the AILA.

Landscape Architecture in Australia Three days of presentations and debate In person and online June 4th, 5th, 6th 2026 Announcing a get-together organised by members, for members, affiliates, friends, scholars and colleagues. Given the recent challenges facing the Landscape Institute, an in-person get-together seems timely, preparing the path towards rebuilding and change. The events will be free to all members, with ticketing to follow via Eventbrite. All sessions will be interactive, online and streamed. Venues at University of Melbourne, RMIT and Victorian Trades Hall have been booked. None will be boring. The draft agenda below is just a beginning. Further details to follow in the coming week. If you would like to get involved drop us a line. Contact email [email protected] Thursday 4th June THE PAST: TIME PASSAGES…. a one-day seminar to celebrate and critique the achievements of landscape architects over the last 60 years. Content: hear about 60 years of achievements in landscape architecture from every State and Territory. Venue: Possibly Great Hall of the National Gallery of Victoria and online, followed by a social event. Friday 5th June THE PRESENT: A FORUM ON WHAT JUST HAPPENED….a day of debate and discussion, focussed on rebuilding. Content: Let’s get down to tin tacks and discuss recent events. A day of structured discussion and unstructured time to understand the current situation and to make changes for the future. Meet new friends, understand and accept difference, contemplate changing minds and the future of landscape in Australia. Venue: Probably the Griffins’ Capitol Saturday 6th June THE FUTURE: ANY CHANGES?…review of the role and content of the Constitution, followed by debate on any key resolutions to make changes, subject to achieving a quorum. Venue: Trades Hall Council, Melbourne (seats 300) and online. Booked. Note: Venues may be adapted or changed to suit final numbers. Ideas welcomed. #landscapeforum2026