2018 ASLA Professional Awards

The Chicago Riverwalk project, an initiative to reclaim the Chicago River for the ecological, recreational, and economic benefit of the city, is responsible for many realized and continuous river improvements over the past three decades. The segment between State Street and Lake Street represented the last unrealized and disconnected link between the lake and the river's confluence in the downtown core.

This five-block phase of the Riverwalk extension creates

The Iqaluit Municipal Cemetery has transformed the community's perception of what a cemetery can and should be. Drawing on local and traditional knowledge, the thoughtful combinations of natural materials and indigenous cultural elements create a dynamic community space where the arctic landscape and its peoples are remembered and celebrated. With an organic design that embraces the beauty of sparseness, the simplicity of this design is what creates its magic. A st

Landscape architecture is the primary, galvanic presence unifying Duke's new student life precinct. Between 2007 and 2017, one landscape architect brought consistent design leadership and contextual sensitivity to five individual projects executed in collaboration with eight architects to transform a disparate collection of program nodes, utilitarian infrastructure, historic quads, and campus pathways into a coherent district. With a nuanced reading of historic fab

The Main Fountain Garden revitalization builds upon Longwood's first-ever physical master plan, which was completed by the landscape architect in 2011. The original astonishing design by Pierre du Pont was honored, and yet, the fountain garden was re-imagined. It plays a key role in the park as it is the first and most dramatic encounter of the vast gardens which span 1.077 acres. The 83-year-old fountain infrastructure has been replaced with the latest technology,

Re-envisioning Pulaski Park is a restoration of the only remaining green space in downtown Northampton, Massachusetts. At 2.5 acres, the Park is small but mighty. After renovations in the 1970s paved much of the site, the Park had entered a state of disrepair and benign neglect. The Landscape Architect collaborated with the City Engineer to acquire funding through numerous grants and engaged in a year-long public forum design process for community input. The result

Tippet Rise Art Center (Tippet Rise) is one of the most ambitious international sculptural parks and music venues ever conceived. Located on 10,260 acres of rugged ranch land, the site is just outside of Fishtail, Montana, a small town in the southern part of the state. In the shadow of the Beartooth Mountains, this vast landscape consists of gently rolling hills, water-carved canyons, high meadows, mixed grassland, and short-grass prairie under an endless sky.

Tongva Park + Ken Genser Square transformed a former parking lot into a lush landscape of rolling hills, meadows and gardens. The design was shaped by an extensive community process and is now celebrated as an important destination and center for Santa Monica. The most dramatic aspect of the site transformation has been the restoration of its ecosystem - new forest types and amended soils respond to the design's microclimates and showcase a diversity of species spe

The Walker Art Center is one of the nation's top contemporary art institutions. The new Wurtele Upper Garden is a part of a larger vision to re-orient the main entry of the museum, strengthen the relationship with the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, and create a Walker Art Center campus. The vegetated volumes and the circuit path that connects them enhance the welcoming entry approach and provide dynamic experiences for engaging art. The re-imagined garden provides f

This project gives new life and expanded regional prominence to The Blue Garden, a neglected yet significant early 20th-century garden designed by Olmsted Brothers, which exemplified Italianate traditions of the Country Place Era of American gardens, and offered a place of jubilant social gatherings reflecting the colorful personality of its client, Harriet James Curtis. Just as the original garden benefitted from generous patronage, so this site has been revitaliz

Perched at the foot of the historic Burnside Bridge, YARD transforms a remnant parcel in Portland's Central Eastside Industrial District into a shared community landscape that redefines the relationship of a residential tower and its context. The design team, long-term collaborators of exploring unique relationships between site and building, were excited by the challenge of the highly visible site that connected to surrounding context on multiple topographic level

The University of Wisconsin-Madison's 936-acre campus occupies a vital intersection between the capital city and Lake Mendota, and between the institution's long history and enduring legacy. Founded in 1848, the State's oldest and largest university features over 4.5 miles of shoreline; a compelling diversity of cultural, historic, natural and urban landscapes; and a range of past and future development impacts that require improved stewardship practices.

As

Ninety-five percent of Texas is privately owned, thereby providing land owners the unique capacity to enhance the landscape's ecosystem services, embed resiliency, and reinvigorate Texans about their distinctive natural and cultural environment. The Shield Ranch Master Plan demonstrates one family's evolving approach to land stewardship and advocacy during a pivotal point in their 80-year journey. To protect, connect, and share Shield Ranch's 6,800-acre, Austin, TX

The Landscape Architects facilitated the creation of an "entirely different dialogue" between groups culturally connected to the landscape and those positioned to guide the formation of a unique bi-state park. Through a process that fostered teamwork and collaboration, the project brought together representatives of descendant Indigenous communities, local farmers, landowners, residents, economic specialists, historians, naturalists, and other stakeholders, to find

Willamette Falls is the second largest waterfall by volume in the country. For over a century, the breathtaking site has been cut off from public access by industrial infrastructure built along the water's edge. Upon closure of the Blue Heron Paper mill in 2012, city and state agencies came together as the Willamette Falls Legacy Project to secure public access to the Falls. A new riverwalk and its sequence of public spaces will allow visitors to rediscover the ful

4 years in the making, this web-based interactive Atlas surveys the status of, and conflicts between conservation, land-use and urban growth in the world's 36 biodiversity hotspots - regions which by definition harbor the most threatened and irreplaceable biodiversity on earth.

Specifically, the Atlas shows how the hotspots and their 391 constituent ecoregions are performing with regard to meeting 2020 United Nations protected area targets under the legally b

Every year in the Baltimore Harbor natural and anthropogenic siltation processes infill waterways and navigation channels, necessitating the removal of 1.5 million cubic yards of sediment to keep the port operating. The Design with Dredge research program brings together practitioners, community members, academics, regulatory and policy officials, and industry representatives to advance shared conceptual frameworks, planning priorities, and applied landscape strate

The National Aquarium in Baltimore, Maryland sits on a typical post-industrial urban waterfront. Their unique position as global actors and habitat experts makes them well positioned to be an agent of change for urban water quality. With an ultimate goal of transforming their campus into a living lab, the Aquarium teamed with designers, engineers, and researchers to investigate new technologies to produce a more sustainable and high-performing floating wetland.

Although there is public awareness of information describing the effects of climate change, gaps remain in how information is communicated to enable impactful decision-making. There aren't enough human-stories (relatable to everyday people) grounding climate change strategies, and there is a dearth of digital tools reflecting contemporary engagement with complex data.

Homeplace: Conversation Guides for Six Communities, Rebuilding from Hurricane Matthew were designed to address these 

Marnas (www.marnasgarden.com) provides the first public access to the garden laboratory of master designer/theorist, Sven-Ingvar Andersson (1927-2007), who recorded his experiments there, over the course of 50 years, in thousands of photographs. This extraordinary documentation made possible the digital archive and interactive multimedia website, designed as an immersive, three- and four-dimensional exp

How does a parks and recreation department recast itself as a relevant brand today that can successfully face the next century of change? Seeking a vision beyond the typical 'blue and green' parks motif, the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation challenged the design team to craft a brand to spark the public's curiosity in the first systemwide master plan in over 25 years.

Curlers to coyotes roam and recreate in Vancouver's network of 1,300