EARLY ENGAGEMENT WITH ASIA
Reflections on the theme of this issue of Landscape Architecture Australia reveal that my practice as a landscape architect in Australia has paralleled, over a professional lifetime, the development of Australia’s relationship with the Asian region, both culturally and economically.
As the introduction to this issue outlines, the 1970s and the Whitlam Government saw a reorientation of national focus – away from the previously dominant relationships with the United Kingdom and Europe and toward our relationship with Asia. This reorientation was to directly impact the practice of landscape architecture from the start, as Australian landscape architects worked as part of multidisciplinary teams to spearhead the way – tasked with delivering a round of bold new Australian embassies in countries where previously, Australian representation had been much more modest. These new embassies were to have an overtly symbolic role and
