Day 1 Speaker Biographies
Dusty Gedge
Dusty is the founder of the World Green Roof Congress and livingroofs.org. He is also the current President of the European Federation of Green Roof Associations (EFB). The EFB is currently involved with a pan-European Green Roof Training project, which as President he is taking an active role in. Dusty has written a number of seminal papers, technical reports on green roofs and helped campaign and develop the London Green Roof Policy.
He is recognised as an international speaker at conferences throughout the world. Recently he has been invited to Australia, New Zealand, Colorado, Portugal, Greece and Turkey. Although he has a breadth of knowledge on green roofs, he remains passionate about the benefits of green roofs to urban biodiversity, which stems from his work as a nature conservationist in London.
Jim McClelland
Sustainable Futurist, Speaker, Facilitator and Journalist, Jim McClelland has amassed over 20 years’ experience in Media and Events, with the majority of that time spent as Founder, Publisher and Editor of magazines for Sustainability, Business and the Built Environment, including titles such as sustain’, Self and OSC. As a writer, Jim has had work featured in supplements for The Times, plus been quoted in The Sunday Times, The Guardian and The Telegraph. He is also an experienced Public Speaker, Panellist and Chair (Jim chaired 2008 & 2010 WGRC), having championed the business case for Sustainability in a broad range of communities and arenas, from Microsoft HQ, via Chelsea Football Club and Lord’s Cricket Ground, to London’s City Hall and the House of Commons.
Director of Sustainability at McClelland Media Ltd, Jim is also engaged by Chelgate to be ‘of special counsel’ in their public affairs and public relations activities for their Environment division, plus Stradia, as Senior Consultant to their Sustainability team. Active in international markets in his work portfolio as well, Jim holds the post of Features Editor (Europe) for Sustainable Life Media, an integrated media company, based in San Francisco, California, USA.
Emilio Ambasz
Emilio was born in Argentina, and studied at Princeton University. He completed the undergraduate program in one year and earned, the next year, a Master’s Degree in Architecture from the same institution where he taught as Philip Freneau Professor of Architecture. He served as Curator of Design at the Museum of Modern Art, in New York (1969-76), is an Honorary Fellow of the American Institute of Architects. Emilio is acknowledged as the precursor of Green Architecture he is the recipient of numerous architectural and design awards as well as one-man shows at, among others, the Museum of Modern Art, New York (twice), La Triennale di Milano (twice), The Arts Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Contemporary Art Reina Sofia-Madrid.
Michael Berkshire
Michael has a Masters Degree in Urban and Regional Planning and has been with the City of Chicago for the past 10 years implementing public policy that has resulted in over 350 green roofs totaling 5.5 million square feet. In 2011, Michael received an Honor Award in Analysis and Planning from The American Society of Landscape Architects for the comprehensive plan, Adding Green to Urban Design: A City for Us and Future Generations. He is a member of the Board of Directors for the Illinois Chapter of the United States Green Building Council (USGBC).
Day 2 Speaker Biographies
Manfred Kohler
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Manfred Koehler, Landscape architect, BDLA,
Univ. of Applied Sciences Neubrandenburg, Department Landscape architecture and environmental planning, Germany
Homepages: www.gruendach-mv.de www.worldgreenroof.org
Education: Technical University of Berlin, Germany. Diploma Degree 1981, PhD: 1987: about “Eco effect vegetated facades”.
Professional activities: 1981 – 1990: Scientist; Institute of Ecology, Berlin. (Main interests: Urban ecology; Green facades and Green roof systems. Teaching in the academic education of Landscape planner.
1990 – 1994: Executive Director of the Research Centre of Landscape Ecology, Bremen. Working themes: Environmental impact assessment studies and restoration projects during Harbour development and extension planning. Restoration planning of wetland areas.
Since 1994 Professor of Landscape ecology at the University of Applied Sciences Neubrandenburg.
Main research interests:
- Urban ecology; Green roof and living wall technology.
- Historic parks and Gardens in North eastern Germany
- Vegetation development on Golf courses
Since 2008: Vice dean of the Department Landscape Architecture, Surveying, Geo-informatics at the University of Applied Sciences.
Founder of the Green Roof Research Centre at the Univ. of Applied Sciences in Neubrandenburg;
Member of: Federal Landscape architecture organisation (BDLA), Member of the national working group for Green roof guidelines in Germany (FLL); Life time Member of “Green roofs for Healthy City); Speaker of the German FBB, responsible for foreign affairs (National Green building Association), Executive Board European Green Roof Association, Vice president (EFB 2005- 2008).
Co-founder of World Green Infrastructure Network (WGIN), since 2008 President of this organization with Headquarter in Toronto.
More than 100 related publications on vegetation in contact with buildings.
Tina Saaby
Tina was educated at the Royal Academy School of Architecture in Copenhagen and the Aarhus School of Architecture. From 2003 to 2010 she was a partner in the office WITRAZ Architects, a company working with urban development and social housing. Since 2010 she is the City Architect of Copenhagen. Her planning approach is operational and strategic towards a complex urbanity and a cooperation-based urban development.
Nur Faezah Sanif
Faezah is a Manager of the Skyrise Greenery unit at the National Parks Board, Singapore. A landscape architect by training and a certified horticulturist, she has been involved in many residential and commercial landscape projects. Her current role is to support the implementation of green roofs and other forms of skyrise greenery in Singapore through promotion and awareness. Beside educating the community on integrating greenery with buildings, she also manages the Green Roof Incentive Scheme, an initiative by the government to assist building owners and developers to install green roofs, roof gardens and vertical greenery. She was also an organising committee member of the International Skyrise Greenery Conference held at Singapore in Nov 2010.
Bruce Hemstock
As a landscape architect who has lived and worked in urban centres across Canada and the United States I decided that the relatively mild climate of the west coast was quite appealing. I have had the pleasure of being part of PWL Partnership for the past eighteen years and together with my colleagues been a part of planning, designing and detailing a lot of Vancouver’s large, waterfront, urban parks and open spaces. A good deal of these landscapes are on the roofs of the various buildings that fill the downtown landscape. This work has illustrated how important green space is to humans and at the same time how little ecological space we leave for the insects and birds. The Vancouver Convention Centre expansion was a turning point in my career. It gave me the opportunity to not only explore the idea of ecological overlays in urban conditions but also design, detail and watch as one was constructed and then matured over time. As a result when I see a roof, I see ecology.
Fabienne Giboudeaux
Born in 1960, in Dijon (France), she got a diploma in photography in 1980 at the University of Saint-Charles in Marseille. Later on, she graduated in urban studies at Université Parix X Nanterre (2002). In 2001, she was elected as local councillor in the 20th district of Paris and became deputy mayor in charge of urban planning in this district up to 2008. In 2004, she became councillor of Paris. In 2006, she was nominated as chairman of Société d’économie mixte de la Ville de Paris (SIEMP), a semi public company in charge of the eradication of squalid housing on the whole territory of Paris. In 2008, she was re-elected as councillor of Paris and was designated as deputy mayor of Paris in charge of green spaces.
Unn Ellefsen
Unn is a qualified landscape architect from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences.
She has experience from working within different municipalities in Norway (Stavanger, Bærum, Røyken), as well as a private consulting firm Asplan Viak A/S working in planning, engineering and architecture.
For the last twenty years she has worked for the Ministry of Environment in Norway. Her work focuses on planning, research and development work: particularly density and greenstructure, political instruments for effective and sustainable land use, city transformation.
Her recent work involves working with adaptation to climate change on a local level within the program The Cities of the Future
