Reimagining the West Bund: Bridging practice and academia
A strong connection between practice and academia benefits both sides. Ethan Zhang, Senior Landscape Architect at ASPECT Studios, and sessional Course Leader in RMIT University’s Landscape Architecture program, embodies this through his active role in both worlds. With a global perspective cultivated through award-winning projects across Australia and China, Ethan brings a unique blend of expertise and innovation to the field. His leadership in international academic partnerships reflects ASPECT Studios’ dedication to fostering global design excellence and inspiring the next generation of designers. A recent example of this took the form of a joint studio initiative between RMIT, SJTU, and TU Berlin.
In today’s interconnected world, landscape architecture projects increasingly require practitioners to work in international and multi-practice teams on complex, international sites. Integrating the development of these collaborative skills into landscape architectural education is important for preparing the next generation of landscape architects. A recent joint initiative between RMIT University, Shanghai Jiaotong University (SJTU) and Technische Universität Berlin (TUB) explores how this can be done by forming an international partnership of practitioners and academics that blends global perspectives with local insights. By integrating international industry practitioners and real-world clients into academic education, the initiative offers students unparalleled opportunities to address complex, real-world projects through cross-cultural teamwork.
This initiative is more than a platform for design education: it is a living laboratory for global citizenship, interdisciplinary collaboration, and cultural exchange.
Following an immersive site tour on the first day, the inter-institutional groups had only three days to undertake analysis, strategise design goals and visions, and then execute concepts, site plans, and associated illustrations. The design competition concluded with a final presentation, showcasing inspiring ideas and innovative designs that impressed practitioners and representatives from the West Bund Group.
The initiative was led and facilitated by a team of academics and professionals, including Ethan Zhang, Senior Landscape Architect at ASPECT Studios; Dr Alice Lewis, Lecturer and Program Manager of the Master of Landscape Architecture at RMIT; Professor Wang Ling, Associate Professor at SJTU; Lee Parks, Executive Director at AECOM Shanghai; and Norman Harzer, Lecturer at TU Berlin.
The students were asked to understand the urban substance and existing condition through a palimpsest process, peeling back the layers what was present to uncover the lives and narratives hidden underneath, excavating marks, traces and presences to envision an alternate future for the West Bund riverfront.
Walking together in the site and through the city was at the heart of the programme. Students were encouraged to look for those elements not usually evident in plans and drawings – the contingent, the ephemeral, the vague – that might lead to previously unknown material and experiences with which to inform the design proposition.
The universal language of design
The design competition work highlighted the universal power of design as a language. While linguistic and cultural differences presented challenges, students overcame these barriers through sketches, diagrams, precedent images, and collaborative ideation. Design became a shared tool for connection.
In today’s global economy, the ability to work across cultures is increasingly essential for all designers. This studio pushed students beyond their comfort zones, teaching them to communicate and collaborate effectively across boundaries, build global networks, and work on projects that exist outside their own cultural and environmental contexts.
Students grappled with complex, entangled global challenges, including climate change, biodiversity loss, and urban renewal, while grounding these abstract global challenges in tangible, site-specific realities. These are inherently global issues requiring global talent and a coordinated, international approach and understanding.
