Perspective

Editor Emily Wong on this issue of Landscape Architecture Australia.

We acknowledge the Traditional Owners of Country throughout Australia and recognize their continuing connection to land, waters and culture. We pay our respects to their Elders past, present and emerging.

This issue of Landscape Architecture Australia addresses the issues arising out of the sixth International Festival of Landscape Architecture: The Square and the Park, held in Melbourne last year.

The creative directors of the festival,

Jillian Walliss, Cassandra Chilton and Kirsten Bauer, are the guest editors for this issue, and the articles collected within these pages summarize some of the festival’s key discussions around the future of the square and the park and present new ways of thinking about the design and management of open space in evolving urban conditions. They offer both a record of past practice and a platform from which to build a future discourse.

I would like to thank Jillian, Cassandra and Kirsten for initiating this issue and taking on the guest editor’s role, bringing together their recent international experiences and academic and practice-based knowledge to the task at hand. I also extend my thanks to the issue’s collaborating contributors – academics and practitioners, from Australia and across the globe – all of whom have contributed considerable time and effort toward the making of this issue. Time is a potent lens through which to reevaluate work – and designing and reflecting are reciprocal activities. The mix of critical reflections with future speculation presented in this issue argue for a reorientation and reconceptualization of future practice. This is a timely and thought-provoking issue that evokes what might lie ahead for the discipline as it continues to grapple with the immense and extended challenges of the Anthropocene.