In October 2007, I was browsing architecture sites like Archdaily and found myself wondering why do landscape architects not have an independent blog for information and news. That day I registered the domain worldlandscapearchitect.com and put up a “Coming Soon†page and then went on published my first posts in November 2007.
At first, I was posting news articles and this then moved on to competitions and announcements along with the odd project. I was working as an Associate Landscape Architect in Shenzhen, China.
The initial idea was to create sites for each country and I started uaelandscapearchitect.com and chinalandscapearchitect.com. However, due to my day job and the world economy on the verge of collapsing I shifted my focus back to one blog.
Over the coming years, it evolved from World Landscape Architect to World Landscape Architecture to WLA moving away from solely about publishing news and adding more projects, reviews, and competitions. It has always been about publishing work of landscape architects as a source of information and not a typical blog where one person states their opinion or idea on a project or subject.
The most interesting part of publishing is the readers, contributors and their feedback and excitement and joy from being published on WLA. I think that has been one of the greatest rewards of publishing WLA for the last 10 years. Also, it has been an honour to meet readers and contributors in real life at conferences and events and hear their stories about their projects.
Most people think that there is a team of people behind WLA, but many are amazed to hear that there is only one person publishing WLA (including the magazine). I have never sort the limelight and always wanted to make WLA about sharing and promoting landscape architecture.
Due to time commitments, and the changing way we absorb and research information, this will be the last edition of WLA Magazine. The website blog will continue to publish work and the WLA Awards will still seek to honour the work of landscape architects every year across the world.
I would like to thank my family and friends for supporting me (and understanding the numerous excuses for working weekends on WLA). I would also like to thank all the sponsors, readers and the designers and firms who have contributed work over the years as they are what truly made this fun and exciting to curate and publish.
I have published the final edition of WLA Magazine but look forward to continuing to publish the WLA blog and run the WLA Awards. It is not the end but allowing time to work on the blog and promote landscape architecture.