2017 ASLA Professional Awards

This garden is a contemporary space in sync with Brazilian tropical heritage. It harmonizes a floating garden amidst water, lush greenery with bold, clean constructed elements.

The Windhover Contemplative Center, named for a series of paintings by artist Nathan Oliveira, simultaneously functions as an art gallery, spiritual sanctuary, and contemplative garden on the busy Stanford Campus. Using Oliveira’s art as a vehicle for personal renewal, the center provides a place for students, faculty, and staff to decompress and re-center themselves. The integrated design capitalizes on the building’s unique context -- adjacent to an existing oak woodland – to provide a seri

Honoring the past while shaping the future was the inspiration for the Land Art at Owens Lake. Collaboration between state and local agencies, community members, tribal leaders and biologists resulted in the artistic design solution, the ‘Whitecaps’. Oriented along the north-south axis, the ‘Whitecaps’ recall the past when 80 mph winds blew across the 100-square-mile lake. Sculptural forms provide habitat benefits for migratory birds, mammals and invertebrates with stacked rock niches which o

The SteelStacks Arts + Cultural Campus rose from the shadows of the former Bethlehem Steel Plant, invigorating the region through the transformation of an abandoned industrial site into a vibrant, urban, arts and entertainment destination. The project demonstrates the power of design to catalyze community revitalization, by paying homage to the history and integrity of the site, and allowing visitors the opportunity to once again stand at the foot of the iconic Bethlehem Steel blast furnaces.

Seattle’s Central Seawall Project replaced 3,700 linear feet of derelict seawall with a new state-of-the-art, seismic-resistant seawall that is seamlessly integrated with an unprecedented salmon migration corridor, an enhanced tidal marine environment, and an updated pedestrian promenade. The Central Seawall Project is a massive urban infrastructure project which addresses current issues of sea level rise, ecology and aquatic habitat rehabilitation while in the center of a large port city.

The Yue-Yuan Courtyard is a meeting point of the modern architecture and the Chinese classical garden of Suzhou. Located in Suzhou, the landscape architectural design of the courtyard is beyond visual representation or replica of the classical garden of Suzhou, yet inspired by the sophisticated spirit and culture of the tradition. Embracing the distinctive natural characteristics of the region, the courtyard creates a metaphorical abstraction of nature. The high precision of the construction

The North Carolina Museum of Art (NCMA) is situated on 164-acres of picturesque rolling hills in one of the fastest growing urban regions in the country. With its vision: “To enrich lives through the power and wonder of art,” the museum embodies the heart of visual arts and design for the entire state. In addition to extensive interior galleries, the museum has created one of the largest curated art parks in the world. The landscape architect was engaged to develop a comprehensive master plan

The Regenstein Learning Campus is a new environmental discovery center and nature playground at the Chicago Botanic Garden. This six-acre horticultural campus serves a vibrant community of families, offering an interactive experience with the natural world, while advancing the institution’s influence as a science and horticultural center that serves more than 125,000 people each year. The design immerses families and children of all ages to a variety of outdoor experiences that include inquir

On the fringe of San Francisco Bay in Silicon Valley, a marginal postindustrial site is transformed into a vibrant campus where architecture and landscape are integrated in a poetic and purposeful workplace. A dramatic nine-acre rooftop park reveals the synthesis of built and natural systems, fosters connections between employees and their broader environment, and reframes how one thinks about buildings and landscapes. Art, ecology and social spaces are thoughtfully interwoven in a cinematic

The Telegraph Hill Residence landscape design expands and dramatizes the entry sequence and exterior spaces of an existing hillside residence by dissolving the barrier between the user and the expansive landscape beyond. A carefully choreographed entry sequence along an entry stair welcomes the visitor, creating moments for pause, respite and drama while negotiating the substantial grade change from the sidewalk to the front door. Along the sequence, clean walls of corten steel contrast with

This five-acre site at the edge of Acadia National Park was once the summer home of Charles William Eliot, president of Harvard University and pioneer of the American landscape preservation movement in Maine. Prior to our involvement, the original estate had been demolished and large areas of the site were blasted for new construction. The project redefines the traditional understanding of landscape restoration, weaving site history with legible design form, structured as a journey down to th

This compound of rural contemporary buildings with clean geometry and a palette of natural materials steps up and down the steep, wooded 17-acre site. Less than two miles north of Sonoma’s historic square, it features views over the Sonoma Valley and beyond to San Francisco across the Bay.

The entire compound is off-grid, generating enough energy with hidden PV panels to power all on-site electrical needs, and charge the owner’s electric vehicles.

Arbors of woven willow panels s

This 6000m 2 property is positioned below a discharge point for storm water drainage of a 300-hectare residential development. An engineered solution had two pipes, each one meter in diameter, at the top of a precipice, and consequently they created significant erosion during heavy storms. Invasive blackberry vines quickly replaced the eroded natural vegetation. The landscape architect aimed first to control the storm drainage and restore natural environments before combining with the archite

In the mid-1990s, the owners and landscape architect set out to transform 16 acres of fallow farmland into a rural retreat. In the two decades since, the project has expanded into a continuous and evolutionary process of horticultural experimentation, a direct reflection of the client’s ongoing education in plants and living systems. The owner and landscape architect’s understanding of what it means to make a garden has also evolved with the times, a process of learning from horticulturalists

Small working farms are fast disappearing from the New England coastline, pressured by suburban development and challenging economic viability. This 200-acre farm, the largest remaining rural tract in Stonington borough (CT), was rescued from this fate by new owners with a deep commitment to preserving the area's agrarian heritage. The site contains artifacts from over 200 years of development – a rectilinear pattern of fieldstone walls, fields, and hedgerows draped over the characteristic dr

The sheer cliffs that define the unique geologic character of this region, began 200 million years ago with the retreat of the glaciers at the end of the Triassic period. Ice flows melted and fractured, sloughing off the uppermost layer of sedimentary sandstone exposing the underlying diabase sill to a freeze-thaw cycle that ultimately created the escarpment’s vertical crevasses. It is the textured, extruded remnants of this geologic rarity – the grooved basalt cliffs and forested talus slope

The NorthPoint Apartments, built in 1969 in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood, featured five courtyards designed by the office of Lawrence Halprin, located over podium parking. Half a century later, as the courtyard landscapes had to be replaced due to waterproofing failure, the design team successfully reinvented the project while meeting two aggressive challenges: honoring Halprin's legacy in a contemporary fashion; and reapportioning common and private spaces to meet changed expecta

Located on 250-acres in the Hudson Valley, the Olana State Historic Site is the home, studio and landscape of celebrated Hudson River School painter, Frederic Church, and is considered one of his greatest works of art. The New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation (NYSOPRHP), working alongside The Olana Partnership (TOP), commissioned the landscape architects to assess Olana programmatically, operationally, and ecologically. The resultant Strategic Landscape Design

The Waterfront Botanical Gardens Master Plan details the transformation of a former landfill into a lush, interactive landscape and community amenity for the City of Louisville, Kentucky. It represents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to design a visitor destination that would establish Kentucky as a global leader in sustainable design, localism, and stewardship of the land.

The plan synthesizes the natural advantages of this waterfront site while cultivating a rich program founded o

Designated a national monument by President Obama in February 2015, Pullman is a treasure of Chicago’s south side. In its heyday as a manufacturing town, Pullman provided the setting for the evolution of industry and transportation, achievements in planning, architecture, and landscape architecture, the foundation of labor law, and the advancement of civil liberties for African Americans.

On the heels of the Pullman’s national designation, AIA Chicago and the National Parks Conservatio

Tucked into Chile’s remote Patagonian fjords, the project area is a privately-held 570-acre promontory within Chile’s 750,000-acre Parque Nacional Corcovado. The site overlooks Tic-Toc Marine Park, one of the most bio-diverse and productive marine ecosystems on Earth. Situated between these critical components of Chile’s conservation network, the commission represents an opportunity for landscape architecture to effect positive change at the intersection of national park traditions and indivi

Neighborhoods in Detroit and other cities across the country are dealing with the impact of blighted and vacant properties in their communities. The Fitzgerald Revitalization Project proposes a unique, landscape-driven approach to revitalizing neighborhoods.

This project envisions a bold new way to address distressed neighborhoods by focusing on the landscape of the entire neighborhood rather than addressing blighted properties on a lot-by-lot basis. The project addresses all vacant an

The Texas Capitol Complex Master Plan creates a comprehensive vision for the forty-block area surrounding the State Capitol in downtown Austin, providing a strategic framework for the development and transformation of the most prominent site in the State’s real estate portfolio. Future buildings are organized around and help define the pedestrian realm and civic spaces. The most noteworthy such space is the Texas Mall, a four-block tree-lined open space, created by the vacation of a portion o

The study of climate change impacts on cultural landscapes in the Pacific West Region (PWR), of the National Park System, assessed how these landscapes might be affected by key climate variables, and developed recommendations for future research toward the agency’s goal of ensuring cultural landscapes’ resilience in light of climate change variables.

Products of this research include a matrix designed to update and organize data needed to evaluate the exposure of inventoried cultural

Green roofs promise controlled runoff and reduced heat loads but current reliance on exotic sedums belies biodiversity. Furthermore, because a green roof is added as a premium, means it often fails to survive value engineering and never gets built. This research examined a suite of materials and techniques to improve and enhance establishment and use of native grasses on green roofs. An easily adopted, innovative procedure for planting fluffy-seeded native grasses speeded installation. Seedin

Los Angeles’ streets interrupted an interconnected tributary system that collected and delivered filtered water to the regional mainstem: the LA River. The GRASS analysis began as an attempt to restore some of the benefits of the natural tributary system of built and natural corridors. It builds a dynamic planning process that connects “top down” policy directives with “bottom up” solutions. Agency collaborators, academics and local professionals formed multiple working groups or “charrettes”

While extensive information on individual plants and animals is available to landscape architects in print and online, few resources give a holistic sense of ecological systems and fewer still provide a way of understanding their changes over time. The Ecological Atlas Project works at the intersection of art, science and technology. By developing intuitive mappings of natural patterns such as bloom times, deciduous patterns, vegetative seasonality, animal migrations, and other time-dependent

The Landscapes of the George W. Bush Presidential Center is written for the general public with the goal of helping people understand how ecology and sustainability, particularly plants and stormwater, have shaped both the making of the park and their experiences when they visit. This book records the design thinking, ecological mission, technological underpinnings, and construction of the first native landscape built for a presidential library park. Transforming the Bush Center’s derelict ur

The Landscape Architecture of Lawrence Halprin traveling photographic exhibition, gallery guide and complementary website chronicles one of the nation’s most significant postwar practitioners, from early residential commissions (including the Donnell Garden for former employer Thomas Church), through five decades of practice concluding with capstone projects in Yosemite National Park and Sigmund Stern Grove in San Francisco. Fifty-five newly commissioned photographs by leading artists documen

Part monograph, part manual, part manifesto, Toward an Urban Ecology reconceives urban landscape design as a form of activism, advocating for a synthesis of research, practice, and community engagement that is generative of a new form of urban ecology. The book depicts a range of participatory and science-based strategies through the lens of SCAPE’s work, featuring projects, collaborators, and invited essays. The book reveals how design can engage embedded natural processes, cycles, and syste

Jens Jensen The Living Green dramatizes the rise of Jens Jensen (1860-1951), an immigrant street sweeper who became one of the nation’s first champions of eco-justice. Jensen’s life illuminates the early battles of urban development that favored the wealthy and led to “park deserts,” ecological design, and our primordial need to connect with “the living green” of nature within the city. With associates Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Sullivan, Dwight Perkins, and Alfred Caldwell, Jensen was inspire

ARC, the Animal Road Crossing project, is an interdisciplinary partnership seeking to inspire new thinking, new methods, new materials and new solutions for the next-generation of wildlife crossing structures to (re)connect landscapes fragmented by roads. Despite their proven track record, wildlife crossing structure designs have generally been repurposed from traditional highway infrastructure built for vehicles. ARC originated the world’s first International Wildlife Crossing Design Competi