Marina's studies and project outcomes have focused on exploring relationships and narratives of place and identity, landscape ecologies, cultural heritage and politics/economies.
Her process is grounded in both the experiential-relational and research to inform a body of extensive written and visual outcomes. During her Honours year, she has focused on the unique qualities of extractive landscapes - considering humans and non-humans in relationship with these sites, the wounded landscape, strategy planning and phasing, emotional heritage and connections across deep time. Ongoing learning, relationship building and care of First Nations knowledge and Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property (ICIP) is of importance to her practice.
2022 Karl Langer Jury
Vicki Barclay (Chair)
Alice Grostein
Glen Power
Jury Chair Comments -Vicki Barclay
I would like to extend my gratitude to AILA and QUT for the opportunity to sit on the Karl Langer Panel and extend my thanks to Glen Power and Alice Grostein for their time and contribution in the selection of this year’s Karl Langer Award recipient.
The Karl Langer selection process is a fantastic opportunity to recharge the batteries, to hear our future leader’s passion and refresh on design philosophy and this year’s nominees, our future leaders did not disappoint. This year’s students took on some challenging topics including retrofitting suburbia, equitable green infrastructure provision, increasing biodiversity, and designing with and caring for Country.
2022 Karl Langer Jury Comments
Winner
Marina Couchman
Mariana’s diverse background in health, the creative industries and tertiary educations sectors have shaped her broad approach to landscape projects. Mariana’s understanding of governmental frameworks with a deep desire for environmental and social justice translates into a well-considered and evocative response for landscape to be the catalyst for change, which was also evident in her presentation style. Of particular note is her Opal Imaginary project which seeks to address the past, present and future of opal landscapes. Mariana’s creative and graphic skills are most evident in this project and the visualisations strongly demonstrate how environmental reform can trigger change across many platforms.
Nominees
Alix Veitch
Alix Lung views landscape architecture as a way to harness the power of emotional connection to place, historical and cultural values, and the collective ability to imagine a brighter future. Alix wants to align her experience as a mother with wanting to drive positive change and to hope for a more equitable, greener, and connected future. Alix's portfolio illustrates a great skill in multiplying layers of technical data and emotional information to enable a landscape language and design position that challenges existing stereotypes. The body of work completed over the course of her studies is beautifully presented, elegantly positioned, simple and clean, and impactful as design propositions.
Aiden Dunne
Aiden Dunne, whose deep connection to landscape was nurtured growing up on the sunshine coast. Aiden’s portfolio, a focus on setting, demonstrated the intrinsic values shared between environments and the communities that exist within them. His fourth-year work in particular demonstrated solutions to tensions held within communities, consolidating growth within an existing urban footprint and retrofitting healthy green infrastructure into existing communities. We would also like to acknowledge Aiden’s graphic approach to mapping, where he has undertaken thorough exercises to measure and describe the world in alternative methods to reveal its future potentials.
Richard Avery
Richard Avery whose background in photography and horticulture has given him a unique set of skills that are apparent on his work, bringing nature and landscape to the forefront of meaningful urban design. His planting palettes are chosen carefully for their textures, colours, structure and to increase biodiversity of our landscapes. A particular strong point of Richard is his verbal communication, presentation skills and ability to express his ideas and emotions.
Richard’s work is driven by a commitment to reconciliation, landscape equality and harmony within our Country and it also focuses on the role of well-designed streetscapes in climate resilience while advocating for human connection to wild and Country.