Background
Zaš Brezar (born in 1984) founded Landezine, an international online platform that represents the largest archive of contemporary landscape architecture projects, in 2009. In 2016, Landezine expanded its network and empowered its voice in the global community by launching a series of international symposiums Landezine LIVE and LILA Landezine International Landscape Award, by which the Landezine's digital platform spread also into the physical space.
Events in the framework of symposiums and awards' ceremonies are aimed not only at professionals, but also at the general public, for they offer a good overview of what landscape architecture is and what kind of positive changes it can bring to the space. Landscape architecture is not just parks and trees, but rather different considerations and solutions for the transformation of the space, which, in the face of the growing challenges of urbanization, climate changes, deepening social inequality and digital reality, need to be addressed interdisciplinary.
This development and expansion of Landezine's activities wouldn’t have been possible without the expertise by Robert Schäfer who joined the team as an adviser. Schäfer studied landscape architecture and journalism, founded Topos Magazine in 1992 and was in charge of Garten+Landschaft Magazine since 1984.
Landezine stepped in to carry on the tradition of awarding outstanding landscape architecture office projects which was established in 2003 as Topos Landscape Award and ended in 2014. LILA continues to honour a progressive landscape architecture practice that both significantly contributes to exploring contemporary landscape issues and offers creative solutions to challenges the profession is facing.
Landezine LIVE symposia and LILA Award
Each year since 2016 Landezine organises ceremony with an accompanying international symposium of landscape architecture Landezine LIVE, with lectures and talks by renowned Slovene and international experts. All the lectures and events are accessible on the website and organized within the platform Landezine LIVE.
The first LILA 2016 ceremony with a symposium, named Interdisciplinary Approach – which aimed to explore interdisciplinary approaches in the work of landscape architects – took place in January 2017 in Ljubljana and awarded best office projects. At that time, LILA was the only international award in the world that did not reward individual projects, but rather the landscape architecture collectives and individuals for their approach to creating an open space.
Cf. LILA Landezine International Landscape Award