IDC001
Living Architecture & Green Infrastructure
Buildings, Biodiversity & Nature-Integrated Design
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13 August 2026, 8:30 pm–10:10 pm ACST
IDC002
Living Architecture & Green Infrastructure
Landscape Leadership, Biomimicry & Climate-Resilient Cities
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27 August 2026, 4:30 pm–6:00 pm ACST
IDC001
Living Architecture & Green Infrastructure
Buildings, Biodiversity & Nature-Integrated Design
Guest Convener
Professor Joshua Zeunert
The University of Adelaide | Australia
Professor Joshua Zeunert is an internationally recognised landscape architect, academic and researcher whose work explores the relationship between ecology, urbanism and the designed landscape. His research spans ecological design, green infrastructure, landscape planning and environmental resilience, with a strong focus on how cities can better integrate natural systems to improve biodiversity and human wellbeing.
Host
James Worth
Worth Design Co-Lab | Australia
James Worth is a landscape architect, urban designer and founder of Worth Design Co-Lab. Through the International Design Conversations, he brings together leading global voices across architecture, landscape architecture and sustainability to foster meaningful dialogue on the future of the built environment. His work focuses on living architecture, regenerative design, urban resilience and interdisciplinary collaboration.
CONTRIBUTING VOICES
Chan Ee Mun
Director | WOHA | Singapore
Chan Ee Mun is a Director at WOHA, one of the world’s leading architectural practices specialising in tropical, biophilic and climate-responsive design. His award-winning work explores how architecture can respond to density, climate and urbanisation through environmentally responsive, people-centred design that seamlessly integrates landscape, biodiversity and community into the built environment.
Dong Wang
Turenscape / Peking University | China
Dong Wang is an architect, researcher and educator whose work bridges landscape architecture, ecological urbanism and environmental planning. Through Turenscape and Peking University, he contributes to internationally recognised projects demonstrating how ecological infrastructure, sponge cities and nature-based solutions can improve urban resilience while restoring natural systems at city and regional scales.
Wouter Jochemsen
Sempergreen | The Netherlands
Wouter Jochemsen is an international specialist in green roofs and living architecture with Sempergreen, one of the world’s leading living infrastructure companies. His work focuses on integrating vegetation into buildings to enhance biodiversity, improve stormwater management, reduce urban heat and create healthier, climate-resilient cities through innovative green roof systems.
Geoff Heard
Fytogreen | Australia
Geoff Heard is one of Australia’s leading practitioners in living architecture and urban greening. Through Fytogreen, he has helped deliver many of the country’s most significant green roofs, living walls and urban landscape projects, promoting biodiversity, climate resilience and nature-positive design across commercial, institutional and civic developments.
Linda S. Velazquez
Greenroofs | USA
Linda S. Velazquez is Founder and Publisher of Greenroofs, the world’s longest-running independent online resource dedicated to green roofs and living architecture. For more than two decades she has connected researchers, designers, manufacturers and practitioners worldwide, helping advance innovation, education and knowledge sharing throughout the global living architecture industry.
https://www.greenroofs.com/author/linda/
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Warwick Savvas
ASPECT Studios | Australia
Warwick Savvas is a Principal Landscape Architect at ASPECT Studios whose work explores the integration of ecology, public realm and urban design. His projects demonstrate how landscape architecture can strengthen biodiversity, improve climate resilience and create memorable civic spaces that enrich the relationship between people, place and nature.
https://www.aspect-studios.com/au/
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Claire Martin
Oculus | Australia
Claire Martin is a landscape architect at Oculus whose work focuses on resilient public landscapes, ecological restoration and city-shaping projects. She advocates for landscape-led approaches that integrate biodiversity, cultural values and environmental performance while creating vibrant places that respond to the challenges of climate change and urban growth.
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Dusty Gedge
Living roofs.org| Honorary Ambassador, European Federation of Green Roof and Living Wall Associations | United Kingdom
Dusty Gedge is one of the world’s leading advocates for green roofs, urban biodiversity and living architecture. For more than thirty years he has influenced policy, research and professional practice across Europe and internationally, championing nature-based solutions that reconnect cities with ecological systems while improving biodiversity, climate resilience and human wellbeing.
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ABSTRACT
IDC001
Living Architecture & Green Infrastructure
Buildings, Biodiversity & Nature-Integrated Design
As cities continue to expand and the impacts of climate change intensify, the integration of nature into the built environment has become one of the defining challenges—and opportunities—of contemporary design. From green roofs and living walls to biodiversity-positive buildings, urban forests and nature-based infrastructure, living architecture is reshaping how our cities perform environmentally, socially and economically.
This inaugural International Design Conversation brings together leading practitioners, researchers and innovators from Australia, Singapore, China, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States to explore how architecture, landscape architecture and urban design can work together to create healthier, more resilient and ecologically connected places.
The conversation will examine emerging design philosophies, international case studies and practical implementation strategies across diverse climatic, cultural and urban contexts. Topics include biodiversity integration, green roof and wall technologies, ecological urbanism, blue-green infrastructure, water-sensitive urban design, policy, maintenance, performance and the evolving relationship between buildings and living systems.
Through a series of concise design provocations followed by a moderated roundtable discussion, participants will share lessons from pioneering projects, challenge conventional approaches to city-making and explore how multidisciplinary collaboration can accelerate the transition towards regenerative, climate-responsive and nature-positive urban environments.
Designed for architects, landscape architects, urban designers, planners, engineers, policymakers, academics, students and industry leaders, IDC001 establishes the International Design Conversations as a global platform for advancing design excellence through collaboration, innovation and the exchange of ideas that will help shape the future of our cities
