Dr. Tan Puay Yok Delivers 2019 SmithGroup JJR Lecture
Dr. Tan Puay Yok, Program Director for MLA and leader of Landscape Studies Research Cluster at the National University of Singapore, was at SEAS to deliver the 2019 SmithGroup JJR Lecture. Puay Yok is an Associate Professor in the Department of Architecture in the School of Design and Environment of the National University of Singapore. He current serves as the Program Director for the Master of Landscape Architecture program and the leader of the Research Cluster for Landscape Studies. His research, teaching and professional activities focus on the science, policies, and practices of urban greening and ecology of the built environment. He combines his background in the sciences, experience in urban governance from the public sector, and interactions with practitioners to apply knowledge for urban greening to improve environmental quality and societal well-being. He serves as an Associate Editor for Landscape and Urban Planning and Journal of Urban Ecology. He also advises on landscape design and planning projects in the region as means of transferring knowledge from academia to practice. In his presentation, "Development of Neighbourhood Landscapes with Urban Ecosystem Services," Puay Yok shared the results of a project on the development of guidelines for the design of neighborhood landscapes based on the concept of urban ecosystem services in the high-density, high-rise environment in Singapore. The project was a collaboration between the National University of Singapore and government agencies in Singapore. While developing a practical set of guidelines was the end goal, the project also importantly aimed to bridge current knowledge action gap between academic research and landscape planning and therefore necessitated the use of different methods in stakeholder engagement.