ECLAS Awards 2013

Lifetime Achievement Award

The first of the two Lifetime Achievement Awards goes to Professor Richard Stiles. As a past president of ECLAS but more importantly as the coordinator of the series of Le:Notre network projects which finally end in 2013, Richard is known to everyone in Europe and far beyond for his hard work not only in writing the proposals which resulted in the funding (five projects in total) but in managing them, overseeing the development of the website, writing the final reports and managing the budgets (together with his team of assistants and web designers). This, while also carrying out a “normal” academic job as professor in the Vienna University of Technology means that he has achieved in his career to date more than most people manage in a whole lifetime. The Le:Notre project has immeasurably strengthened landscape architecture as an academic discipline in Europe. Now the project is in the process of evolving into the Le Notre Institute, with Richard as first chair of the board of directors, so his career continues. The committee felt that this was a particularly suitable time to mark the end of the project by making this award.

Lifetime Achievement Award

The second Lifetime Achievement Award goes to Dr. Habil. Imre Jámbor, from the Department of Landscape Architecture at Corvinus University in Hungary. Although retired, Imre Jámbor still teaches. He was in the Department of Landscape Architecture for many years, seeing it through the changes following the collapse of Communism and the reestablishment of the programme along modern lines. Before that time he helped to organise the IFLA congress in Budapest in 1984. In the course of his long career he played many roles in academia, including vice-rector of the university, dean of the faculty and was head of department until 2010 when he retired. He has also been active in many landscape architecture organisations and was a founding member of ECLAS. As a practitioner he has over 50 realised projects. He has also received several prestigious awards including the Knights Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary, the Entz Ferenc Medal and the Golden Degree Laureate of Szent Istvan University. Imre Jámbor has had an illustrious career in his country and internationally.

Outstanding Educator Award

The Outstanding Educator Award 2013 is presented to Ir. Adriaan van Haaften, a senior member of staff in the chair group of landscape architecture at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, from which he is due to retire at the end of the year after 26 years teaching at Delft and Wageningen Universities. Adri van den Brink and his other colleagues in the department, who nominated Adriaan, stressed his excellence as a teacher of drawing and visualisation to which he has made an original contribution. He developed a set of drawing rules expressed in a drawing language. His teaching approaches and supporting materials for the students were noted as being of high quality. Adriaan van Haaften continues to emphasise the importance of good hand drawing techniques as a precursor to the successful use of digital graphics. He has also been appreciated by his students who nominated him as teacher of the year in 2006. His techniques have been written down in a book currently in Dutch which would be of greater value if it was to be translated into English.

Outstanding Researcher Award

Professor Dr Eckart Lange, Department of Landscape, Unioversity of Sheffield, UK.

Professor Dr Eckart Lange, Department of Landscape, Unioversity of Sheffield, UK.

Eckart was educated in Landscape Architecture and Landscape Planning at the Technische Universität Berlin, Edinburgh College of Art and Harvard University (Graduate School of Design), prior to joining the Department of Landscape at the University of Sheffield as Professor in 2004 and Head of Department since 2010. He has also worked for 15 years as Scientific Collaborator and Senior Researcher at the Institute for Spatial and Landscape Planning in the City and Landscape Network at ETH Zürich.

Eckart’s research activities have strongly influenced the field of landscape architecture in the development of landscape visualisation and modelling and its application as a research field, e.g. to communicate proposed changes in the landscape and to explore human responses for decision-making. This has been widely recognised in the international research community.

He has successfully acquired research grants and managed interdisciplinary research teams.

His research projects span a range of scales and issues including urban green space strategies, rural landscape development, landscape aesthetics, planning and design communication. During his career Eckart has received several major international awards and has delivered a large number of keynote speeches, as well as receiving fellowships and guest professorships.

His research has been recognised with many awards such the 1st Prize (1994) of the Best of GIS Images Award by the international journals GIS World / GIS Europe, the Digital Landscape Architecture DLA 2010 Award for IT Research in Landscape Architecture and

a number of conference awards in Salzburg (AGIT), Ascona and Dessau. In 2011 he was the first European landscape architect to be awarded the Excellence in Research & Creative Works Award by the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture (CELA).

 

Eckart’s research has been communicated to a wide range of academic, professional and public audiences with 8 books (1 in German/English), 5 special issues, as well as 30 articles in refereed journals, and more than 120 contributions in refereed proceedings, book chapters, invited journal papers and papers in professional journals in many languages.

 

Eckart has also been Scientific Advisor to the Wissenschaftsrat (Scientific Advisory Council for the

Federal Republic of Germany) and the only international member of the evaluation board for the German Federal Agency for Nature Protection. Since 2008 he has been on the Scientific Committee of the European Environment Agency, as the only representative of landscape architecture.

Outstanding Student Award (Master)

The Outstanding Student Award (Master) is received by Attila Tóth who graduated in 2012 from the Department of Garden and Landscape Architecture, Slovak University of Agriculture, Nitra, Slovakia. As well as completing a prizewinning thesis Attila has been very active in the wider academic world, an ELASA representative and has had several internships. He has won several awards for scientific presentations and in 2010 was Student Personality of Slovakia. He is now doing a PhD and is active in the young academics group within ECLAS.

Outstanding Student Award (Bachelor)

The Outstanding Student Award (Bachelor) is awarded to Adina Matroz fo the Department of Landscape Planning and Design at the Faculty of Urbanism in Ion Mincu University, Bucharest, Romania. Adina is an excellent designer but, as if the workload of a bachelor student is not enough, she participated in several competitions including the IFLA student competition in 2012. Some o fher work has been shown at the Bucharest Parliament Palace. In addition Adina has been active in promoting studies in landscape architecture and has made keynote presentations to high school students in her home town, encouraging them to consider taking up a career in the subject. It is this enthusiasm and initiative which the jury found compelling in Adina, who now studies for her master degree in Ion Mincu University.

Regenerative Landscapes - Designing the Transition
ECLAS Conference 2024 - Call for Abstracts is open until January 31, 2024 Regenerative Landscapes - Designing the Transition Hosted at ULB in Brussels from September 7 - 10, 2024