I hope that this message finds you and your family safe and well. These few months have been upending for everyone with unprecedented changes to how we live and work.
As humans, we tend to view the world and act as giants in this age of the Anthropocene. However life as we knew it have been brought to a standstill by something as microscopic as a virus. Hopefully this break from the status quo allows us the opportunity to take a restock on how we view ourselves, as a small part of the larger whole, and with more humility.
As our daily lives have been disrupted, so too has SILA’s operations. Planned events have been cancelled or postponed. The committee is exploring ways in which we can still achieve our CPD and continuous learning obligations via programmes or courses online. Our AGM has also been postponed till the second half of the year, with the high likelihood of it being held digitally online. We will keep you abreast of any updates when they come online or you may like to check out our social media presences for our latest postings.
Most of us are having to work from home now. Multi-tasking has taken on a new meaning - being a virtual worker, home based learning co-facilitator and home maker all at the same time. Despite this, I hope that we will be able to still go out into the outdoors to find some comfort and respite. April is World Landscape Architecture Month (WLAM) after all.
As announced recently, Singapore will be transformed from a “city in a garden” to a “city in nature” in the next 10 years, where more plant life and nature will be integrated into our urbanised areas. This is the natural next step forward where we have to enhance our strategies to manage the different demands in urbanization, conservation of our natural habitats and mitigating climate change.
Landscape architects will be critically called upon in this key transformation, for our professional expertise in amalgamating creative place-making with the conservation of our natural capital. As the nation’s professional body, we encourage and look forward to our local landscape architects contributing in this transformation. Nobody knows our context and environment more than our home-based expertise.
On behalf of SILA Council, I wish everyone the best of health and thank you to those who have written in to check-in on us.
Best regards,
Ronnie Tan,
President, SILA
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