Theme: Evolving Norms: Adapting Scholarship to Disruptive Phenomena

During this pandemic, professionals and educators in landscape architecture must unite the historic norms and contemporary issues with the ‘new normal’ for landscape architecture. This graphic design represents a gateway that transforms unprecedented global issues such as climate change into climate positive, pandemics into technology innovation, social unrest into equity, and rapid environmental degradation into sustainability. Landscape architects will be one of the few professions capable of providing carbon-sequestering solutions through climate-positive design. Climate change can be the driver for improving design quality, utilizing and evolving present standards, and developing broad-scope standards and large-scale plans. With increasing populations, many facilities need to be housed in high-rise buildings, and it is the responsibility of landscape architects to design spaces within buildings that provide active and passive spaces for dwellers. Streets that are active, tree-lined, pedestrian-friendly, and support many modes and patterns of transport now require more involvement from professionals and scholars of landscape architecture. Changes in climatic zones and their impact on flora and fauna are currently a major subject of discussions and arguments, and native, invasive, indigenous, and endemic have a clear impact on disasters such as floods, fires, and drought. With pandemics, increased climate change concerns, rising congestion and consumption, and dwindling resources, landscape architects need to innovate creative design solutions that deliver the best results with the available resources. The proposed graphic design is a cumulative and symbolic representation of all these design thoughts.