W
hile working in northern Laos over a decade ago,
I asked a local colleague to generate a simple
business card to explain to officials (in the local
dialect) that I was an Australian landscape architect with an
interest in urban and land design and management. Later that
month, when presenting my credentials and project findings to
the minister in charge, my counterparts proudly announced
that I was an international agricultural science expert! Therein
lies one of the great challenges and contradictions of landscape
architectural practice in the Asia-Pacific region during an era
of such transformative change. Where our identity and role in
the region was firstly framed in a context of discrete urban
management and environmental conservation, it has quite
rapidly shifted to one where we are now instrumental
contributors in the age of rapid urbanization and megacities.
This year, Hansen Partnership marked its twentieth
anniversary of continuing planning and design practice in the
Asia-Pacific region, particularly in Vietnam, where under the
leadership and financial support of the Australian Federal
Government’s AusAid program the practice launched the first
urban conservation masterplan for the now world-renowned
Hanoi Old Town. Since those early days (in parallel with
dwindling Australian funding and political interest),
generational shifts in Asian urbanization and corresponding
planning and design education have had a telling influence on
the way we (and our counterparts) perceive and experience
cities and spaces. Furthermore, our project experiences have
strongly influenced our own introspective approach to
practice, both when operating in the Asia-Pacific or back
on home soil in Melbour ne.In keeping with constantly shifting sands – the incredible
pace of change in the region over the past two decades (notably
urbanization, but also in corresponding fields of tourism,
heritage and environmental management) – we have been
required to substantially adapt our mode of practice and
approach to projects. Where the earliest initiatives focused
on “capacity building” and basic design tenets (typically with
government clients), the maturing of local professionals and
increased private interests required a progressive shift toward
more sophisticated forms of active collaboration. More
recently, and consistent with the role of international donors
(and globalized education), our projects are increasingly
shaped as partnerships, where teams operate side by side with
international counterparts on an equal disciplinary footing.In the Australian context, where design propositions are
sometimes overcomplicated, we have benefited greatly from
what we have learnt working internationally in a very “raw”
manner. Over time, we have encountered people, places and
projects in which (what we perceive as) very simple, assumed
planning and design principles have been misunderstood,
requiring us to work differently – such as exploring private
tenure and land improvement opportunities in a context
where the state is the single land owner. Conversely, through
collaboration we have also learnt much about the special
relationships that exist between people and their settings,02 03