Cassandra Chilton is a landscape architect and artist. Trained in both landscape architecture and gold and silversmithing, Cassandra’s design ethos is centred on the relationship between living systems, craft, materiality, people and place. Cassandra is a principal at Rush/Wright Associates and a founding member of the art collective Hotham Street Ladies whose humorous and occasionally controversial works have been published and exhibited both locally and internationally.

Claire Martin is a landscape architect, and design advocate. She is a registered landscape architect and Associate Director of OCULUS’s Melbourne studio where she has led the delivery of a range of education, health, cultural and infrastructural projects. She is a Fellow and President of the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects, and the Asia-Pacific Region Chair of the International Federation of Landscape Architects’ Climate Change Working Group. Claire is a longstanding contributing editor of Landscape Architecture Australia magazine and a member of the Office of the Victorian Government Architect’s Victorian Design Review Panel. Claire is also a member of the Landscape Architecture Industry Advisory Committee at RMIT University, where she has taught and is an invited critic.

Jocelyn Chiew is the Director of City Design at the City of Melbourne where she leads a multidisciplinary team of 50 staff. She is passionate about the expanded practice of design and how this can lead to more inclusive, sustainable and nurturing built outcomes for the city. Jocelyn is a Nationally Elected Councillor at the Australian Institute of Architects and a member of the Victorian Government Architect’s Victorian Design Review Panel. She has over 18 years’ experience in the planning, design, delivery and management of vibrant urban places. To hear more see MTalks: the Excellent City Series or follow @thecityarchitect.

Kirsten is a landscape architect based in Wurundjeri Country. As Director of global landscape architecture and environmental design practice ASPECT Studios. she has led numerous award-winning public realm projects, including Yagan Square, Caulfield to Dandenong Level Crossing Removal Project and Prahran Square. She is a member of the inaugural Birrarung Council, a member of the Victorian Design Review Panel, Adjunct Professor of Landscape Architecture at RMIT University, and was Co-Creative Director of the 2019 International Festival of Landscape Architecture and Future Park Competition.

Mark Gillingham is the Founding Director of Melbourne-based practice GLAS Landscape Architects. He has over 20 years experience as a registered landscape architect working in Australia, Europe and the Middle East. Since establishing GLAS in 2011, Mark has built a practice that explores opportunities to enhance urban biodiversity and works to embed resilient, ecological systems in all projects, from large-scale masterplanning down to the smallest of pocket parks. GLAS has won recognition for ecologically progressive designs, including the Monash Valley Creek restoration, the Wootten Road Reserve native grassland and the botanical restoration of the System Garden at the University of Melbourne.

Mark Jacques is an urban designer and landscape architect. He graduated from the UNSW Sydney’s College of Fine Arts in 1994 and was awarded the inaugural Richard Dovey Medal. In 2016 he founded Openwork, an office focused on public space realized through projects in landscape architecture, urban design, research and speculation. In 2015, Mark was appointed Professor of Architecture (Urbanism) Industry Fellow within RMIT University’s School of Architecture and Urban Design. In 2021, Mark was appointed to the inaugural Melbourne Design Review Panel, part of the City of Melbourne’s Design Excellence Program.

Marti Fooks is a Director of Outerspace Landscape Architects based in Melbourne. She has extensive experience both locally and internationally, working on a variety of complex and highly acclaimed projects. Marti’s skills range from conceptual thinking to project management, but she is most well known for her design activism. Her ongoing passion for landscape architecture lies in the discipline’s potential to advocate for equity, combat the climate crises and challenge the status quo. Marti has a special interest and skills in safer by design approaches. Her work investigates the potential of places to reduce the risk of harm for visitors and communities, particularity for those less able to defend themselves.

Sarah is a practising landscape architect and a director of Bush Projects Landscape Architecture based in Melbourne.

Bush Projects is a cross-disciplinary landscape architecture studio working at a range of scales, including civic & educational environments and landscape restoration. The practice is founded on an approach of responsive design, prioritising the environmental, social, cultural and recreational values of landscape.

Sarah’s background in fine art and public art has informed her distinctive approach to design, which is guided by the specific ecologies and overlapping contextual narratives of site.

Simone Bliss is a landscape architect and creative director of SBLA Studio. Her innovation,  creativity and inclusive approach to design is highly valued within the creative industry. She has eighteen years experience in masterplanning, feasibility studies and full design services for projects of varying scales – from city wide to detailed bespoke furniture and custom play elements. Prior to establishing SBLA studio she worked on a number of landscape architectural projects both in Australia and internationally including  Bendigo Kangan Tafe redevelopment, Nightingale 2.0, Auckland Waterfront, RMIT University, Vietnam and the Pod Playground at The National Arboretum in Canberra. She has recently been selected to be a panelist on the City of Melbourne’s Design review panel for 2022.

AILA Cultivate opens dialogues around alternative and expanded modes of landscape architectural practice through conversations and collaborations with other disciplines, including art, architecture, industrial design and publishing. It seeks to interrogate and explore how other disciplines can inform and enrich our understanding of landscape and design and the ethical and philosophical issues that underpin how we position ourselves and our practice as agents in the transformation of the environment. AILA Cultivate is chaired by Virginia Overell and Olivia O’Donnell, with Jen Lynch, Ella Gauci-Seddon, Emily Wong and Nicholas Braun.

The Australian Institute of Landscape Architects (AILA) leads a dynamic and respected profession: creating great places to support healthy communities and a sustainable planet.