IFLA Newsletter # 104 April 2013
SOME THOUGHTS ON THE EDUCATION AND TRAINING OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS TONY WILLIAMS IFLA EUROPE. VICE PRESIDENT (EDUCATION) The following article is based on a paper prepared for the UNISCAPE Conference on 'Landscape and Imagination' held in Paris from the 2nd to the 4th of May 2013. I attended the last day of the conference and presented the paper. My presentation was an annotation of the paper rather than a verbatim reading thereof. The presentation was followed by a discussion and some dialogue with colleagues from UNISCAPE. A stated aim of the IFLA Europe Education Committee is to foster closer ties with our colleagues in UNISCAPE (and others) and the preparation of the paper and attendance at the conference afforded me the opportunity to develop such a relationship. I must thank the organizers of the conference and particularly the Director of UNISCAPE, Prof. Bas Pedroli and Tessa Goodman of the UNISCAPE office. The proceedings of the conference and the papers will be available on the UNISCAPE website in due course. Introduction The work of IFLA is carried out for the most part by the voluntary efforts of its member organizations and individual national delegates and ordinary members. The executive roles, which include education, are also carried out on a voluntary basis. This paper thus relies on the results and the combined efforts of many past members of the executive of IFLA and of its countless volunteers who gave their time in order to develop the structures and projects of IFLA. I, as the current incumbent Vice President of Education am thus carrying on the work of my predecessors and hopefully preparing the way for my successors. Indeed much of the current work (and that of the past and I expect in the future) is done by the members of the Education Committee and by the IFLA delegates and members of the national associations. This work is done in tandem with our colleagues in the academic world. To use the old adage, I only see so far as I ‘stand on the shoulders of giants’. IFLA, IFLA EUROPE AND EDUCATION AND TRAINING OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS. The Role of IFLA On the fortieth anniversary of IFLA's foundation in 1987, Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe mused 'What has IFLA done for me?' and answered his own question with a robust 'A good deal more than you realize, my friend'. Elaborating on this he said that 'above all IFLA has a vital part to play in the world wide, science-dominated civilization that has come upon us so suddenly'. ——————————————————————————————————————————————————(1) The origin of this adage is 12th century theologian and author John of Salisbury who used a version of the
phrase in a treatise on logic called Metalogicon, written in Latin in 1159. Translations of this difficult book are quite variable but the gist of what Salisbury said is: "We are like dwarfs sitting on the shoulders of giants. We see more, and things that are more distant, than they did, not because our sight is superior or because we are taller than they, but because they raise us up, and by their great stature add to ours."
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