LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD: M. TERESA L. ANDRESEN
Early in her career Teresa Andresen was employed as a Landscape Architecture assistant at the High Institute of Agronomy at the Technical University of Lisbon and from 1987 to 2002 she taught Regional and Urban Planning at the University of Aveiro. She set up the Landscape Architecture Programme at the University of Porto in 2001. Teresa had a major role mentoring students, high quality teaching and research and internationalising the course. She became full professor in 2007 and ended her teaching in 2014.
She was an educator and also a practitioner deeply involved in many facets of the profession, aware of the close relationship between education and practice – she was president of the Portuguese Association of Landscape Architects (1992-1994), president of EFLA (2004-2007), and vice-president of IFLA in 2007, member of the Scientific Committee of the European Environment Agency (2002-2008) and Vice President in 2008.
Teresa Andresen research interests include the theory and history of landscape architecture. She was responsible for a ground-breaking investigation on the work of the first Portuguese landscape architects, such as Francisco Caldeira Cabral. She dedicated a significant part of her activity to the study of Portuguese cultural landscapes. She was chairman of the Institute for Nature Conservation, a government body, in 1996-1997 and coordinator of the team that led the High Douro Wine Region to be inscribed in the World Heritage List. Currently she is a member of the National Council of Environment and Sustainable Development and expert in the Permanent Delegation of Portugal to UNESCO World Heritage.
Teresa Andresen has been very influential both nationally as internationally, she has mentored generations of landscape architects and she has contributed actively to the development of the formal education and to the visibility of the profession and its achievements.
SPECIAL ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
We confer this distinction on Professor Emeritus Koit Alekand for his role as the founder of Landscape Architecture education and the subsequent establishment of landscape architecture as an independent profession in Estonia (in the period since the regaining of independence). He has been among the figures, who laid the foundation for the development of the contemporary active generation of landscape architects in Estonia. Koit Alekand was not a landscape architect – he could not be, since the discipline did not exist in the Soviet Union – he was a land engineer, expert in land improvement and drainage. He was a technical candidate (meaning he had the equivalent of a PhD) from 1966, professor since 1994, and in 1997 he became professor emeritus of the Estonian University of Life Sciences. His special achievement which justifies the award is the inauguration of landscape architecture as a specialty in the then Estonian Agricultural University in 1994.
OUTSTANDING EDUCATOR AWARD
Professor Tiina Sarap’s significance for the development of a strong school for Landscape educations in Sweden cannot be overestimated. Professor Sarap has raised the awareness of the importance of landscape as an academic field both internally within the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) and externally. She has also strongly influenced the pedagogic attitude and culture in the Landscape departments at SLU. She has done this in several roles; as the head of the department of Landscape Architecture, as a teacher and Professor of Landscape Architecture and as Dean for the Faculty of Landscape Architecture, Horticulture and Crop Production Science. With an impressive perseverance and engagement, professor Sarap has always worked with the student’s best interests in mind, with a deep concern for pedagogic values. As an educator she has used her well-grounded earlier experiences from employments in consultancy firms and in the City of Malmö to imprint contemporary Landscape education with pedagogy that foster the important relation between theory and professional work. She has also been very supportive of the work of ECLAS and LE:NOTRE, which has been used for example in the realisation of the Bologna process in landscape education at SLU, Alnarp. She has, with an inexhaustible energy, implemented organisational processes at SLU and worked with administrative and organisational procedures to highlight Landscape educations and to raise the status of Landscape as an academic field. Professor Sarap has recently retired from SLU.
OUTSTANDING STUDENT (MASTER) AWARD: JAANA AHLBERG
Jaana Ahlberg finished her master thesis at the Estonian University of Life Sciences and defended it in 2015, gaining an “A”. Her work involved evaluating the degree of success of a number of small landscape intervention projects of a temporary nature in Estonia and Romania. She spent rather a long time in completing her degree but this was for very practical reasons: she has been involved in local landscape projects herself as a community activist and has contributed greatly to raising the profile of landscape architecture in housing landscapes and elsewhere. It is this activism which adds considerable values to her achievement as a master student. This kind of local involvement in countries where the profession still needs a lot of development, where funds are scarce and where habits of local participation by residents in their own landscapes are poorly developed. Jana has also been an active member of the Estonian Landscape Architect Students Association over the years.
OUTSTANDNG STUDENT (BACHELOR) AWARD: DAVOR DUŠANIĆ
Davor Dušanić graduated in landscape architecture at the University of Ljubljana in 2015. In 2013 he received the national Zois scholarship for gifted students. He was among the 5% of the best students in his generation every year of his study. In his 3rd year, in the summer semester, he was at the Corvinus University in Budapest, Hungary as an Erasmus exchange student. Davor showed great talent and willingness to learn. He entered international student competitions already in the second year of his study. Since then he tested his performance continuously at home and abroad in competitions and workshops in addition to his excellent performance within the regular curricula. In a short period of two years he achieved an outstanding success confirmed by several nominations, grants and distinctions including an Outstanding project entry, travel grant (among 12 nominated projects for Global Schindler Award), a Distinction Award at International student landscape architecture competition for Tristis Septemvriou street redevelopment proposal, Thessaloniki, Greece, January 2015 and Credit / Distinction average result – among 5% of the best students in generation (2012, 2013, 2014). With his excellent representational skills Davor also demonstrates his profound understanding of landscape and the potential of landscape design to humanize urban environments. Thus he successfully represents the field of landscape architecture in the predominantly architectural and urban design creative environment.
OUTSTANDING SERVICE AWARD: FREDERICO MEIRELES RODRIGUES, KRISTINE VUGULE AND INGRID SARLÖV HERLIN
This has been awarded to three people who have been long-standing and very active members of the ECLAS executive committee, now retiring from the committee due to the expiration of their terms. Frederico Meireles, of the University of Tras os Montes y Alto Douro, Portugal, has been the treasurer of ECLAS, Kristine Vulue of the Latvia uNiversity fo Agriculture, has been the Secretary General and Ingrid Sarlöv Herlin of SLU, Alnarp has represented ECLAS at the European Landscape Convention. We sincerely thank them for their dedicated service, which is entirely voluntary and without any financial remuneration.
