A Sea of Green in November. Landscape Architecture Week Opens
On 24 November, Moscow hosted the opening of the 16th Festival National Award of Russia in Landscape Architecture and Garden and Park Art — the leading annual event in the field. Until 28 November inclusive, the Central House of Architects will host a wide range of events of interest both to professionals and to a broad audience passionate about cities and nature.
In his video address to participants and guests of the opening ceremony, which filled the exhibition hall of the Central House of Architects to capacity, International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA) President Bruno Marques emphasised the importance of the event for the entire industry. “The International Federation of Landscape Architects is a global family, and you are an integral part of it. The Award plays an important role in the exchange of advanced professional experience and contributes to the promotion of our shared goals. The festival projects represent the very best our profession has to offer today,” Mr Marques noted.
This year, 205 projects were submitted to the jury — a record in the history of the festival. Anyone may attend the project defences, a unique feature of the Award, whose principal organiser is the Association of Landscape Architects of Russia (ALAROS). In addition, 350 exhibition panels with images and descriptions of the projects are displayed at the Central House of Architects — another unprecedented figure.
“The festival is gaining popularity across Russia: last year there were 67 participants, while this year there are 104. Colleagues from Voronezh, Yekaterinburg, Irkutsk, Kazan, Tomsk, and many other cities submitted their work. I am delighted that their projects are presented here and will be assessed by a highly qualified jury,” emphasised ALAROS President Taisia Wolfftrub.
Around twenty industry professionals took part in the opening ceremony, including Elizaveta Fokina, Director General of the Tsaritsyno Museum-Reserve (the festival is dedicated this year to the 250th anniversary of Tsaritsyno), as well as State Duma Deputy, Chairman of the All-Russian Society for Nature Conservation, and UN Goodwill Ambassador Vyacheslav Fetisov, who called for greater coordination in the protection of green spaces. To this end, a memorandum of cooperation was signed during the ceremony between ALAROS, the Association of Market Participants in Automatic Irrigation and Landscape Design “ROSA,” and the Association of Planting Material Producers.
The ceremony also included the presentation of the Bolotov Award, a competition aimed at supporting young landscape architects. First prize was awarded to Sergey Fyodorov, a student of Saint Petersburg State Forestry University. He and the other laureates received not only a one-year scholarship, but also the opportunity to undertake internships with one of Russia’s largest landscape companies.
The results were summed up by the host of the ceremony, Co-founder of the Agency for strategic development "CENTER" (the organiser of the festival’s business programme) Sergei Georgievskii, who also chairs the Award’s organising committee. “We are ahead of a week of landscape architecture accompanied by an extensive business programme. Every day, leading experts in their fields will speak about everything related to landscape architecture, design, eco-urbanism, biodiversity, and nature in the city — about how we are addressing the challenge of creating a healthy environment today and how we will continue to do so in the future. After all, we are all striving for a better future for cities and territories across Russia and around the world,” he said.
The festival’s business programme is almost twice as extensive as in previous years and includes seven expert events. Among them are a session on new technologies and materials in landscaping (25 November at 17:30), a discussion on how to find a balance between protecting urban nature and using it (26 November at 17:30), and a special session dedicated to the 250th anniversary of Tsaritsyno (27 November at 16:00).
The culmination of the festival will be the closing ceremony, at which awards will be presented to the best practitioners in the field. The event will take place on 28 November and will begin at 17:30.
Registration to attend is available via the link: centeragency.org/ru/projects/169.
Festival website: alaros.ru/festival-main.
Photo: Nikolai Sokolov