Judging Success
ASLA'S 2002 student design competition was flooded with entries, providing a plethora of winning picks for this year's jury.
By Heather Hammatt, ASLA

This year's ASLA Student Awards jury members were faced with a record-breaking 146 entries, nearly twice last year's number, promoting lively competition, debate, and discussion among jury members. The increased participation was prompted in part by an effort to step up awareness of the awards program with a monthly electronic newsletter from asla to the student chapters and by last year's article in Landscape Architecture, "Missed Opportunities or Just Rewards," November 2001, according to Ron Leighton, ASLA's director of education. The University of Guelph topped the list again with 24 entries, while California Polytechnic University in San Luis Obispo held onto the second slot with 18 entries.

A variety of newcomers made their first appearance in the competition in the new century—eleven schools total, with five boasting award and commendation winners. Student winners tackled a variety of topics critically important to the landscape architecture profession, according to juror Rodney Swink, FASLA, current president of ASLA.

Topics included participatory design, environmental reclamation, and the effects of culture on the landscape. According to Lisa Geer, ASLA, students were providing ideas not only for recreation but also for adaptive reuse and green space delineation, integrating their sites into the natural environment and the culture of the surrounding communities. Undergraduate design winners presented a wealth of ideas from capping a brownfield with a golf course (addressing soil contamination, habitat creation, and the necessary water remediation), to integrating education and agriculture in interactive community design, to bioretention and its future implications for the water quality in a National Wildlife Refuge.

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