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2002 ASLA Annual Meeting & EXPO

Opening General Session

8:30am-10:00am
Civic Center Auditorium

ASLA opens the 2002 annual meeting with a dynamic session in San Jose's Civic Center Auditorium. Directly across the street from the McEnery Convention Center, this welcoming, Spanish Mission style structure will host all three general sessions.

The meeting theme unifies this session, exploring the challenges facing the Society and the profession. Particularly, the singular role of landscape architects as leaders in discovering solutions will be addressed. President Rodney Swink, FASLA, will review the successes and achievements of the profession during his tenure, including the first annual National Landscape Architecture Week, the growth of ASLA's government advocacy program, and much more. Executive Vice President, Nancy Somerville will cover the issues engaging the Society during the past year and recap the many accomplishments, projects, programs, and collaborations which are underway. As his schedule allows, Mayor Ron Gonzales of San Jose will attend to welcome ASLA. The program also provides the occasion for recognizing various members and supporters of the annual meeting.

The keynote speaker for this session is Jerry Hirshberg, internationally renowned designer and author. He will focus on the theme of modern technology and how it allows landscape architects to extend their influence in the design community. The profession is evolving from traditional tools of design using hand drafting and sketching into computer-generated visual information. Many landscape architects who trained under the traditional style are not comfortable with the new technology and may even feel that design creativity is further limited by computer aided design. Mr. Hirshberg will address how that gap can be bridged in order to advance beyond other design professions by promoting this integration of modern tools with traditional design theory.

Mr. Hirshberg is particularly well-suited to this discussion of new vs. traditional approaches. Under his leadership, Nissan Design America became one of the great international design studios. He was able to take advantage of new design technology to produce a new breed of automotive designs, even though he was trained in the old school of using modeling clay and pen for his designs.

When Mr. Hirshberg left as the executive designer for General Motors in 1996, he became the founding Director and eventually President of Nissan Design Group International, Inc. (now known as Nissan Design America). He recently stepped down as President, and now serves as Global Strategic Advisor as well as corporate spokesperson in an ongoing national ad campaign.

His experience in developing a highly unique organization and management style led to the publication of his acclaimed book on the role of creativity in organizations, The Creative Priority, now entering its third edition.