2018 ASLA Student Awards

Myth, Memory and Landscape in the Pyramid Lake Paiute Reservation uses Landscape Architecture as an instrument, demonstrating the power of design to transform communities and perspectives in a meaningful way. The Landscape Installation uncovering the story of the untold story of Lake Winemucca is located at the once confluence between Pyramid Lake and Lake Winemucca. This project uncovers new methods for engaging with indigenous culture and hardships when

Sharawadgi Garden wrestles with the challenge of designing a contemporary hybrid Chinese and Western garden for the MoMA courtyard space, currently occupied by Philip Johnson's Modernist sculpture garden.

Beginning with Marco Polo's accounts of the 'exotic' and 'otherworldly' East, China has maintained an othered position in the Western fantasy. As imported Chinese luxury goods became more widespread in the West, Western artisans and designers began to produ

In the Anthropocene, human-induced environmental change effects diverse lives across every species. Our fate remains hopelessly entangled with myriad interdependent networks through the synchronous choreography of the ecosystem. Some ecosystems, invisible to the human eye, elude our consciousness. Underwater habitats, coral reefs, tidal flats, mangrove forests and seagrass beds link ecological processes across landscapes and seascapes, yet they suffer most from the

Nuclear waste is a critical challenge to humanity. Since the Manhattan Project was initiated in 1942, the conjoined efforts of the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense produce and manage expansive nuclear energy and weapon systems. One of the most important sites for America's nuclear weapons production is the Hanford Nuclear Site in southeast Washington. Fueled by the fears of World War II and the Cold War, the aegis of patriotic necessity essentiali

India, a country rapidly moving toward contemporary aspiration of urban livelihood. Looking down upon their thousand years old traditions, which are considered as signs of backwardness, where as some of these practices are well complied with contemporary world. This project tries to extract one of these neglected and unknown practices in the desert of Rajasthan, called "Oran" –a system of settling around a multipurpose forest and maintaining it through generations.

The [RESERVE] is a harborside residential community proposed for South Boston's Reserve Channel. Private residential property lines are not a central organizing feature at the [RESERVE]. Rather, the neighborhood is shared with Boston Public Works and is designed to support urban snowmelt and a dynamic landscape that generates a sense of community, a source of income and a service to the city of Boston. Life at the [RESERVE] nurtures community spirit and adaptation

This project aspires to explore how problematic levels of algae (specifically Bioluminescent Algae, Blue Green Algae and Diatoms Algae) in waterways might be addressed through innovative landscape design strategies that move beyond reductive en

This project initiates from questioning the limitations of planning at the scale of a site. Based on a close reading of a masterplan document, it proposes a methodology to test planning documents and a new approach to improve the planning decisions.

This project selects to test the 2013 Greater New Orleans Urban Water Plan and focuses on the segment of the Hollygrove District. The Hollygrove District is one of the neighborhoods that are dealing with post-Katr

Wildfire management requires the deployment of strategies developed to acknowledge the delicate balance of ecological systems among expanding communities within the wildland urban interface (WUI). Pyro-diversion: Planning for Fire in the San Gabriel Valley responds to the ecological and anthropological needs of southern California by implementing a novel set of landscape strategies used to slow down, but not suppress, wildfires along the foothills of the A

The St. Lawrence-Great Lakes navigation channel acts as a spine for Canada's economic exchanges. With alarming climate scenarios in which a significant decrease in water levels is projected, authorities will require a new capital dredging project.

This project focuses on the dredging of the Lake St. Pierre, a UNESCO biosphere reserve traversed by a major navigation channel. The massive removal and necessary placement of dredge material presents a unique oppor

As Mexico City continues to add its population, geologic, economic, social, and historical factors and constraints have pushed development and irregular settlements to the hillsides of the city's peripheries.

Current informal urbanization pattern lacks infrastructural provisions and open space, which further increases social inequality. This project introduces a pre-emptive approach, a topographic landscape strategy that acts as an open space armature for fut

Lake Winnipeg is one of the largest freshwater lakes in the world. The territory of the Lake's watershed crosses many jurisdictions of Canada and the United States. The Lake is an integral part of Manitoban heritage, as it is celebrated for its many beach communities.Due to heavy nutrient loading within the watershed, Lake Winnipeg is known as one of the most threatened lake in the world. Industrial agriculture in the region has resulted in waterway changes and eco

A Student's Guide to Environmental Justice Version 1.3 leads students of landscape architecture through a class studio project while viewing the design process through the lens of environmental justice. It helps prepare students for a career that keeps in mind equity and designing for equitable communities. We lead students through the studio design process, which we define as research, engagement, design, building, and stewardship. Each step in the design

District Hill Cemetery in the town of Chickamauga, Georgia is the historic resting place for the community's African American population. While many people recognize Chickamauga as the site of second deadliest Civil War battle, it was also home to numerous enslaved people and their descendants, many of whom are buried at District Hill.

To this day, the stories of formerly enslaved people and their descendants interred at District Hill go untold, forgotten by

The premise of the studio project, in partnership with the Planning Institute of Saltillo (IMPLAN), was to develop urban design guidelines for the city of Saltillo with the objective of improving the quality of life of citizens through better public spaces. These guidelines, which are currently being distributed in Saltillo, were divided into five sections: Partner, Analysis, Design, Construction and Maintenance, to address the full life cycle of a project. This p

This project addresses the need for greater complexity in the climatic classifications of plants. The current USDA Plant Hardiness Zones is the main climatic classification system used by nurseries and horticultural plant consumers. This system was invented in the 1940s, before widely collected and accessible global climatic data was available, and only accounts for the lowest temperature in a given location. It does not account for precipitation and hydric deficit

This collaborative project addresses the lack of healthy outdoor and indoor spaces for Arctic inhabitants - specifically children - by developing a seasonally dynamic school in interior Alaska. It is a region of climatic extremes, ranging from -50F to 80F, which has recently generated an architecture solely focused on the building threshold, insulating indoor space from these harsh conditions at the cost of alienated outdoor spaces.

This collaboration between

A once neglected space on the grounds of a former monastery turned high school dormitory has emerged as a community therapeutic garden. It is now a place of peace, intergenerational social exchange, and sensory stimulation for a multitude of people: resident high schoolers, kindergarteners, community members, and two communities underserved in the realm of equal access to local parks, members of the Association for the Blind and Association for People Over 60 with

The Dolores Street Pollinator Boulevard is an urban resiliency project that creates healthy and diverse ecosystems, cultivates community, and revives the civic values of one of San Francisco's landmark streets. Located in the Mission, an iconic neighborhood that struggles to maintain its identity of refuge and diversity, the Pollinator Boulevard is a ribbon of habitat that redefines street median space in a beautiful and ecologically meaningful way. This highly vis

Jazz Fence encloses the Bronzeville neighborhood's new Great Migration Sculpture Garden and was designed and built by two students of Landscape Architecture in collaboration with community leaders, construction trades, neighborhood youth, and professional advisers. Jazz Fence was a design investigation of shadows, geometry, and color to augment the sculptural program of the garden which was constructed on a surplu