Global Perspective
Student ASLA Award winners take on social and environmental issues.

By Joshua Gray

This year’s student award winners clearly have a global perspective on landscape architecture, with projects from New Orleans to Mumbai, India, to Medellín, Colombia. More pointedly, the winners took on large social and environmental issues, with projects that variously sought to purify polluted waterways, reclaim lost and wasted land, and restore blighted urban areas. Education came to the forefront in many projects, with a concentration on reviving community investment, both economic and spiritual. Creative use of new media was also a consistent theme, with films and interactive computer applications making it possible for people to interact with their environment in new ways.

The jury selected 20 projects from the record number of 294 entries this year. Jurors met for two days in June to consider projects in seven categories: Analysis and Planning, Communications, Community Service, General Design, Research, Residential Design, and Student Collaboration.

The official entrant for each award-winning project receives a complimentary registration to the ASLA Annual Meeting, and the official entrant for the Award of Excellence winning projects in each of the seven categories also receives travel and four nights of hotel accommodations.

The jury consisted of F. Christopher Dimond, FASLA, Kansas City, Missouri; Abhijeet Chavan, Planetizen, Los Angeles; Barbara Faga, FASLA, EDAW, Atlanta; Walter Hood, Hood Design, Oakland, California; Jane Kolleeny, Architectural Record, New York; Kevin Robert Perry, ASLA, Nevue Ngan Associates, Portland, Oregon; Kristen Richards, ArchNewsNow.com, New York; and Kevin Shanley, FASLA, SWA Group, Houston.

…To read the entire article, subscribe to LAM!