bdla advisory board met in Würzburg on 20 April 2018.

With the slogan "With dedication and passion since time immemorial", the Juliusspital Würzburg Foundation welcomes its guests. On 20 April 2018, the members of the bdla advisory board got to feel this in a positive sense, as they met in the tithe barn of the winery, which was built over 400 years ago, for their annual meeting. Franconian-traditional remained the framework; the contents of the annual meeting were cutting-edge - from green infrastructure to welcome culture in the bdla to the adoption of the budget 2018/2019.

President of the Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning BBR Petra Wesseler kicked things off with her remarks on the added value of green cities and the equal status of green infrastructure to grey and social infrastructure. "Green infrastructure is an important factor in the appearance of cities and in the design of public spaces. The responsibility for design lies primarily with planners. Quality and aesthetics in living and working environments are important factors that must be safeguarded. However, a key role here is also played by the public client, who determines the composition of planning teams. Only if it is possible to have road engineers develop projects for squares and tram stops together with landscape planners right from the start can quality building culture be created."

The fact that green infrastructure is a concept "with a lot of potential" was made clear by the ensuing discussion in the committee. Green infrastructure is decisive for many fields of action of the Federal Government: adaptation to climate change, promotion of biodiversity and improvement of the everyday living environment of people. "Home" and rural areas, the housing offensive, climate adaptation, grey infrastructure and new mobility, nature conservation, etc. - the coalition's priority areas - must be meaningfully linked to green infrastructure, beyond the Federal Environment Ministry and equally at regional level. In this context, "green expertise" must be strengthened in terms of personnel in the federal authorities and municipal administrations. bdla President Till Rehwaldt added that the already successful urban greening funding programme should definitely be made permanent. "For an effective implementation of the White Paper, the funding programme 'Future Urban Green' must be increased to €100 million p.a."

Member growth and customized advanced training
In the further course of the meeting, Till Rehwaldt and bdla national managing director Ingeborg Paland gave a résumé of the past association year. Thus the total number of the members rose by 2.1 per cent from 1,280 to 1,307. An important criterion of the member production were and are the meetings; in the reporting period the bdla counted approx. 1,500 participants with its trade conferences. In addition to the further training of landscape architects and the occupation of new fields of activity, many an event also served to position the profession and its association in the political arena. Examples of this are the meetings with parliamentarians organised by the BGL, BdB, ZVG and bdla. The strategy will be continued in order to build on these successes.

Recruitment of members was also the keyword at the agenda item "Discussion of association structures and forms of organization". The "welcome culture" in the association is to be further professionalized and qualified. Furthermore, the association should appear as one association and not as 14 individual associations. The work with and in the bdla federal office is evaluated positively; however, the ideas of the state associations go beyond this. They aim at a strengthening of their management, the constant transfer of knowledge between the federal and state level as well as the support of lobbying and public relations work on a regional level. For this purpose, the campaign planning/ content-related setting of priorities by the bdla federation should be adhered to; an annual strategy meeting of the regional group chairpersons is suggested.

Public relations incl. website relaunch
The funding of projects for the public relations work of the regional groups was concerned with communication/public relations work. The advisory board approved the subsidy of 20,000 € for continuous, firmly anchored publicity-effective events at regional level.

The qualification of regional and, above all, federal public relations work - both visually and functionally - was the subject of the agenda item on the relaunch of bdla.de. This is to be completed by the end of 2018; until then, content is to be made clearer, redundancies between federal and regional group websites are to be avoided, the service orientation for members is to be emphasised and thematic platforms are to be created. In a project-accompanying working group with external agency support at present with high pressure one works on an exemplary "Facelifting" of the web page(s). The Advisory Board gave its approval.

After intensive discussion, the Advisory Board followed the proposal of the Berlin/Brandenburg regional association to install an ad hoc working group that - under the leadership of the Competition Working Group - is to deal with the problem of prior involvement in competitions and clarify the positions on this within the bdla.

Approval of the 2017 budget and the 2018/2019 budget and unanimous discharge of the executive committee and federal management concluded the meeting. The state association of Saxony-Anhalt invited those present to hold the next advisory board meeting in their state, which is marked by the Bauhaus anniversary in 2019(#moderndenken).

bdla President Till Rehwaldt closed the meeting by thanking the host Bavarian regional association, which still had a trump up its sleeve, namely a guided walk around the Würzburg State Garden Show. On Saturday Barbara Hutter of the office hutterreimann landscape architecture, which had won the landscape planning competition for the creation of the garden show park, welcomed her colleagues and explained, "Where the ideas grow" on the 28 hectare large area, which went through a metamorphosis from the grey barracks area to the green citizen park for a new city district.

Federation of German Landscape Architects bdla
Wilhelmine-Gemberg-Weg 6, 10179 Berlin
Tel. 030 27 87 15-0, Fax 030 27 87 15-55
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., www.bdla.de

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