The International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA) held their annual business meeting of delegates (IFLA World Council) in Montreal, in conjunction with the first World Design Summit. I suspect this might also be the last World Design Summit for some considerable time, although others may be keen to try their own.

The IFLA World Council meeting is the venue to discuss finance, policy and projects and had a good attendance from delegates of national associations, including the NZILA delegate, Mike Barthelmeh. There was also a sizeable attendance of observers who may participate in workshops and other activities but cannot vote. Such observers included new members of the Advisory Circle, as well as the leader of the IFLA climate change working group Colleen Mercer Clarke, and Barbara Deutsch from the Landscape Architecture Foundation. The meeting moved at a mercifully fast pace and the President Kathryn Moore gave a masterful report, adopting the ICOMOS-IFLA Document on Historic Urban Public Parks and ICOMOS-IFLA Principles Concerning Rural Landscapes as Heritage, and announced full regional support for the IFLA Climate Change Accord. The latter is a simple, straight forward document, which presumably NZILA will also adopt.  Four new Honorary members of IFLA were also announced: Hal Moggridge, Hans Dorn, Francesco Bandarin and Mechtild Rossler, who had all contributed over many years to business and advocacy on cultural landscapes.

The Advisory Circle met with five members and have policy development progressed on carbon footprint issues for the profession (Craig Pocock also convinced the Climate Change workshop that this needed to be addressed as part of their work, which seemed to be adopted very positively) and a City Nature initiative. The European Region members of IFLA focused on a green infrastructure project and the Asia Pacific Region had a focus on a global competition for projects to be held in conjunction with next year’s IFLA conference in Singapore. Emphasis through the meetings was given to national and regional Landscape Charters including the Canadian Landscape Charter. Where is the New Zealand Landscape Charter? (A project for the Landscape Foundation to pursue.) Our NZILA delegate will have other highlights no doubt, especially concerning education and international accreditation of courses.

Montreal is an attractive small European influenced city: bilingual and multi-cultural. It has an attractive historic area by the port, much enjoyed by tourists, and was easy to get around, hampered though by road works. The conference I was to attend had 638 accepted speakers over a week, organised by 12 design organisations, held in a purpose built large conference building. Much advance planning such as the hotel IFLA had been allocated to hold its meeting, was convenient. The shambolic organisation in the time closer to the conference was very testing. The programme changes were inaccurate, rooms not easy to locate and timetabling whimsical.

The conference opened with a set of over 7 keynote speakers and opening welcome speakers (who were at the end as the audience departed), one after another with no breaks, and included the award of the Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe 2017 recipient Dirk Sijmons from the Netherlands, a good industrial designer from Auricon,  Australia, and Jan Gayle, who was an inspiring presenter.

The IFLA Advisory Circle benefitted from the programming as our panel presentation was scheduled for an hour in the morning (which I attended) and two hours later in the afternoon, which had Hal Moggridge presenting on my behalf while I dashed to the airport. They reported that 2 hours was better for our presentation, and we have good responses to a small survey we ran as part of the Panel presentations.

The World Design Summit was still going strong on 23rd with a Montreal Design Declaration being drafted and some of those 638 people still presenting. While the 12 organisation heads will have learned much about each other’s interests over the five years or so of planning, more might have been done to integrate the different groups.. this may have happened later in the week after I had departed but the quick impression I had after two half days was a clear lesson on how not to run a conference.  Less people may have made for more learning and better planning.

Diane Menzies