Bernburg, June 2, 2021 – An Interims report o DLA 2021

The Digital Landscape Architecture Conference DLA May 26-28 at Anhalt University with 400 participants from 45 countries remains very popular.

We are very happy that this year’s second virtual DLA, organized in Germany, had 900 registrations and 400 active participants, keeping with the level of participation of last year’s DLA at Harvard University.

We tried to offer a compact format which was moderated through the entire conference by live moderators.

We learned that Digital Landscape Architecture offers tools needed to contribute to the extensive challenges of Resilient Landscape Architecture and Global Change. After the first day of very well received workshops on UAV, Geodesign, and BIM, the second day focused on Resilient Landscape Architecture. The final day was devoted to standardization in landscape architecture, such as Building Information Models – BIM.

Prof. Dr. Dirk Messner, President of the German Environmental Agency, UBA Umweltbundesamt, in his Welcome Address defined the role of technical tools such as digitalization, Artificial Intelligence, machine learning and digital twins, addressing the objectives of the United Nations’ Agenda 2030. The opening keynote speaker, landscape architect Kotchakorn Voraakhom from Thailand, introduced the problem of rainwater management in the completely sealed city of Bangkok. Keynote speaker landscape architect Mohan S. Rao of India introduced his work on integrating all involved parties in addressing issues of global change. The keynotes on the final day focused on Building Information Models and the need for further development towards Landscape Information Models that address environmental factors more adequately.

The DLA offered three parallel sessions with eight different topics in addition to the keynote lectures. The forty-five lectures are already published as open access paper in JoDLA.info

The video documentation of the sessions and panels will be documented on the DLA web page www.dla-conference.com

Currently online are two lectures from the conference on teaching landscape architecture studios virtually by Prof. Dr. Travis Flohr and Prof. Dr. Jörg Rekittke. The documentation of all presentations will be soon made available.

Some of this year’s DLA pictures: The live panel – here during handing over the DLA 2022 to Harvard at the end of the conference, and a snap shot the communication tool.

Before all the material of the conference is edited, you can watch uncut sessions of the auditorium, plus a video from Room 2 on BIM, on Youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeqUiS2rcME

You can jump to your point of interest:

10:00 Welcome by Prof. Matthias Pietsch

22:45 Impulse on BIM by Dr. Josef Kauer

50:41 Keynote Prof. Dr. Thomas H. Kolbe, TUM: The Digital Landscape Twin. Joint Perspective of BiM, LIM and GIS (end: 1:25:14)

3:40:10 Live Round table on sessions before

4:02.00 Keynote Talk Prof. h.c. Dr. Chirine Etezadzadeh, SmartCity. Institute an prof. Mathias Pietsch: „How to integrate landscape in the smart city development? (end 4:38.43)

4:47:35: Prof. Dr. Jörg Rekittke, Kristine Lee Petersen, Molly Andrews, Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU): Remote Wayfaring and Virtual Fieldwork (end 4:59:55)

5:51:00: Live Round table on sessions before

5:59:00 Closing of DLA 2021 and Invitation to DLA 2022 by Prof. Dr. Stephen Ervin, GSD at Harvard University (end 6:32:00)

And a big thank you to all authors, speakers, reviewers, moderators, technical supporters, sponsors and supporters!

We are looking forward to feedback on this year’s DLA.

The DLA team is already preparing to accept the next abstracts by November 1, 2021. Accepted papers will be published in May 2022 for the section of presentations in Boston in June 2022.