2015 ASLA Professional Awards

The Perez Art Museum Miami, Sculpture Park and restored plant communities, establish a cutting-edge example of adaptive and resilient design that addresses the global threat of sea level rise. Located at the edge of the Atlantic, the Museum blurs the line between architecture and landscape, redefining the “mission” of parks and museums. Extraordinary synergy is achieved between light, shade, air, water, vegetation and structure, advancing the practice of designing for an uncertain future.

Formerly a polluted, derelict riverfront, Mill River Park and Greenway is now a verdant, animated civic space that mends the ecological and social fabric of downtown Stamford, Connecticut. Working closely with engineers and ecologists, the team conceived of a landscape designed to revitalize aquatic and terrestrial habitats and reduce flooding by restoring the channelized river’s edge and introducing hundreds of new native plants. The transformative effect of this park builds on ecological su

Spanning fourteen years and three phases of construction, our renewal of the Clark Art Institute campus expands public access to its unique landscape, brings new significance to its natural and cultural resources, and enriches the Clark’s capacity to realize its educational mission. It is a project of simple materials and broad forms that draw from and intensify the Clark’s deeply beloved rural setting. Building within and upon the larger regional patterns of hydrology and topography, the str

Weishan Wetland Park sets a new paradigm for large parklands and the balance between water remediation, wetland conservation and tourism development in rapidly changing societies. The site – Asia’s largest lake wetland – was falling into decline from years of poor agricultural and aquaculture practices. One of the key design goals is to restore water quality and environment of the regionally significant wetlands. The park transforms a rural wetland site into a significant destination for scie

The concept for Hardberger Park is cultivated wild. Over the last seven years, this Park has become an integration of the rich cultural history of San Antonio, blended with the diverse and resilient ecologies that are native to the region. The Park dedicates 75% of the 311 acre site to preservation and restoration of this native landscape while seamlessly embedding 25% as low-impact recreation. Engaging state-of-the-art green infrastructure and a restored, diverse landscape, the Park has beco

Inspired by the existing modernist façade, the new courtyard at IBM Victoria Ward tower showcases a landscape expression of modern Hawaiian architectural motifs and powerful cultural history. The historic IBM tower was designed by Vladimir Ossipoff—Hawaii’s quintessential modernist. The new landscape is a distilled expression of Hawaiian identity and serves as an introduction to a larger mixed-use master plan of over 60 acres in central Honolulu.

The Massachusetts Convention Center Authority (MCCA), in partnership with its design team, conceived of the 2.7 acre Lawn on D—a flexible, vibrant, and temporary urban space—to be an "early arrival" on D Street, setting the tone for civic impact and expressing the ambitions of a new district along D Street. This district aims to be interactive, flexible, technologically advanced, inspired by art and events, and inclusive of many constituents (residents, workers, conventioneers, tourists). Com

The Public Media Commons creates an interactive open space where arts, education, and public media come together. It’s goal was to develop a new kind of public space that included traditional plaza components as well as features that could respond to media programming. A perforated metal scrim was designed to clad the adjacent existing buildings. The scrim works by first transforming and unifying the vernacular of the surrounding buildings, secondly to create areas for new media components. T

300 Ivy is a LEED Platinum mixed-use development situated in an area that that remains from the demolished San Francisco Central Freeway. The Landscape Architectural scope of work included an innovative Streetscape, on-structure patios, courtyards, and a large Protea garden with an outdoor kitchen. The project also included the design of custom furniture, stone paving, fencing and metal work, and site amenities. The main concept for the spatial design was one of " Mountain Climbing". In the s

For its new residence hall, MassArt used landscape design to reshape its public identity, create a new center of student life, and reflect the school’s expressive design. Mindful of the school’s unique status as the nation’s only public art school, the new landscape is experiential but maintains an informality for its students to feel “comfortable enough to paint in your pajamas.” Situated along Boston’s “Avenue of the Arts,” the landscape capitalizes on public street life. The design’s simpl

Sweetwater Spectrum is an innovative and pioneering model for meeting the unique everyday living needs of adults with Autism. Building on published research and working with the non-profit board of directors, the City of Sonoma, the architect, and other consultants, the landscape architect fashioned an environment that supports the project’s goal of providing residents a ‘life with purpose’.

The 2.8 acre campus in the City of Sonoma includes four residences, each with four bedrooms; a

The Project provides a unique solution for bank retention as a sculptural form while extending its scope to enhance the foreshore and create a stronger sense of place. The abstracted corten wall spans two hundred feet and in conjunction with strategic boulder placement along the foreshore, plays an integral role in dissipating wave energy and ultimately, facilitating the deposition of sand to create habitat for flora and fauna. The project has fostered a huge amount of public engagement on th

Nestled in the Medina River valley of the Central Texas Hill Country, this ranch derives its beauty from its peninsular setting at the convergence of a natural spring and hill country creek. The open-air layout of the new ranch buildings—combined with terraced gardens, water and fire features, trails, and restoration of the site—allow the residents and their guests to be fully, yet comfortably, immersed in the beauty of the Texas Hill Country. A cascading storm water and creek purification fe

This damaged ocean side site presented numerous ecological restoration and aesthetic challenges that our team worked to create a holistic design unifying nature with architecture. Working collaboratively with the architect, we placed three planar elements; the main house, pool and pool house, into a restored natural dune where the buildings float above native beach grass. The rimless edge swimming pool sits in the bright sand, reflecting light, sky and architecture.

The comprehensive

In a dense, residential Brooklyn neighborhood, a tiny backyard has been transformed into a soothing, contemplative garden. Behind a five-story row house, the garden creates the illusion of a larger space and suggests the feeling of wandering in nature. An abandoned water cistern was re-activated and the garden's water collection is a model for the value of stormwater management in micro-urban spaces that also provide peace and pleasure in the city.

The Landscape Architect has completed work on a 100-year master plan to guide the development of Cornwall Park, one of New Zealand’s most valued public urban spaces. The project offered a remarkable opportunity to think on a vast time scale as it designed towards achieving balance between three important elements: the Cultural Landscape of the Maori, early settlers and the founder’s vision, the Agricultural Landscape of New Zealand and the ecological assets of the site. The master plan balanc

The master plan establishes Overlook Farm as an exemplary working landscape, founded on principles of ecological conservation, sustainable agricultural production, and cultural preservation. The Landscape Architect collaborated with the client to re-envision Overlook - a cultural heritage landscape, in Dalton, Pennsylvania. Purchased in 1902, the family’s ancestors commissioned the Olmsted firm to design and implement plans for what was to be a summer retreat. After 100 years of connection to

What kind of infrastructure would a city have to develop if it cultivated its own food? Food City envisions a future based upon resilient and recuperative forms of urbanism in a region with the nation’s highest food insecurity. Food City devises a model agroecological vocabulary for reclaiming a missing middle scale of urban agriculture between that of the individual garden and the industrial farm. This missing middle foodshed functions as an ecological municipal utility featuring green infra

The area between the City of Dallas and the Trinity River Corridor is currently dominated by highways and underdeveloped land. This zone forms a moat around Dallas, truncating downtown at Dealey Plaza and severing the city from the waterfront. This planning vision seeks to connect downtown Dallas and the Trinity River Corridor and to re-envision the zone between them as a vibrant new linear city.

Within a generation, a once pristine uninhabited island was almost irreparably destroyed by invasive species and a factory for the worst of human nature. Yet, through extensive remediation, thoughtful planning, and an unwavering commitment to conservation, James Island becomes a beacon for sensitive living in fragile ecosystems.

Composite Landscapes is a museum exhibition and catalog examining one of landscape architecture’s most recognizable representational forms, the montage view. These composite views depict the conceptual, experiential, and temporal dimensions of landscape. The practice of montage—the overlay of one image over another to produce a composite image—is as old as image making itself. As early as the eighteenth century, landscape gardeners found montage practices to be particularly well suit

Landscape Architecture Frontiers (LA FRONTIERS) is a bi-monthly, topic-oriented publication and the only entirely bilingual Chinese periodical exploring contemporary landscape research and practice. Transcending traditional notions of landscape architecture in China, LA FRONTIERS has pioneered methods of exchange and communication between the East and West, and has published original articles and projects that combine academic research, contemporary practice, and social responsibilit

Modern landscape design increasingly incorporates ecological features and palettes. However, the disciplines of ecological science and landscape architecture have different academic training, career trajectories, vocabulary, and professional cultures. Ecological Restoration, a quarterly academic journal, is a new platform where these two related disciplines can communicate for common progress. A new, special section of the journal, “Design Approaches to Ecological Restoration,” showcases a la

This publication series directly addresses the design/historic preservation divide, recognizing while change is inevitable, landscapes can be transformed with their design integrity intact. Each book focuses on an important midcentury Modernist work, chronicling the planning and design motivations behind the recent work and placing it in its historic context. Richly illustrated with images and drawings—many of which have rarely if ever been seen—the series balances programmatic, design, histo

Landscape history is often cast as a specialized undertaking, an accessory activity removed from the innovative concerns of contemporary design practice. The research project “Collective Visions” challenges that assumption using a series of case studies to illustrate how historical research can function as both a cross-disciplinary fact-finding activity that selects and organizes information, and a revelatory action that shapes our vision of the land. The case studies inventively blend archiv

Landscape architects are dedicated to planting trees in the city, but the contemporary city is not hospitable to healthy mature trees. In response, we rely on often-competing planting strategies and details. Rarely, however, do we analyze the relative outcomes of our choices of soils systems, pavement details, and management practices.

In response, two landscape architects, an arborist, and a soils scientist joined forces to undertake a comparative study — through fieldwork and laborat

Landscape architects design and manage urban parks and forests, but these sites are regularly threatened by non-native invasive plants that degrade the original design intent. We tested the long-term impact of intensive ecological management protocols to remove invasives, add biodiversity, and improve landscape sustainability, 15-20 years after restoration efforts began. Data from 30 restored and 30 unrestored forest plots across five New York City historic parks, including Olmsted designs, s

Launched in summer 2014, www.spontaneousurbanplants.org is a user-generated database of weeds in the urban environment that maps images from the photography application Instagram tagged with #spontaneous urban plants, and filters them based on species, ecological benefits and disservices to the environment. Leveraging principles of urban ecology and environmental aesthetics, the intent is to stimulate discourse between ecologists, designers, artists and the general public that explores societ

The Case Study Investigation (CSI) program is a transformative research collaboration that unites and strengthens the landscape architecture profession by matching funded faculty-student research teams with leading landscape architecture firms to measure and document the performance of their built projects. CSI teams measure the environmental, social, and economic benefits of each exemplary landscape project and document it as a case study. This cross-sector approach strategically li