Announcing the 2026 LFA Fellowship Award: Taylor Coyne
The Landscape Foundation of Australia is pleased to announce that Taylor Coyne has been awarded the 2026 LFA Fellowship.
Congratulations, Taylor!
Taylor Coyne, recipient of the $10,000 2026 LFA Fellowship, whose research explores Country-led approaches to urban water design.
Taylor’s project, Water and Collective Wisdom: A Critical Practice Toolkit for Country-Led Water Sensitive Urban Design, addresses a critical challenge for the profession — how to move from acknowledging Country in principle to embedding it meaningfully in practice.
As Taylor notes, across Australia “Designing with Country” is now widely referenced in planning and design frameworks. However, in many projects, First Nations knowledge remains confined to interpretive elements such as signage, naming, and artwork, rather than shaping the core design decisions around water, ecology, and spatial systems.
His Fellowship project will investigate that gap — identifying where genuine Country-led approaches are influencing urban water design, and the conditions that enable this deeper level of integration.
A central outcome of the project will be a publicly accessible, practice-focused toolkit. Designed for practitioners, councils, and communities, it will provide practical guidance to support more meaningful engagement with First Nations knowledge in urban water and landscape projects.
The research is grounded in collaboration with Badu Ngura (‘Water Country’) and B Hardy, a Dharug sovereign woman and co-director of HardyHardy Studio, ensuring that First Nations knowledge leadership is central to the work.
“We need to move beyond treating Country as something we acknowledge, and start designing with it as the structuring logic of our projects — particularly in how we understand and work with water.”
Taylor’s Fellowship will also draw on and develop case studies across Australia and comparable international contexts, including Aotearoa New Zealand and Canada, to understand how Indigenous-led approaches are shaping urban water systems globally.
This work aligns strongly with LFA’s commitment to supporting research that connects ideas with practice — delivering real-world outcomes that contribute to more resilient, equitable, and nature-positive urban landscapes.
The LFA looks forward to sharing insights from this important work as it progresses