2019 ASLA Student Awards

According to a survey done by United Nations, 15 millions tons per year of plastics is haphazardly dumped into the world's ocean. At the current rate, there could be more plastic by weight than fish by 2050. (David Hutt, 2018) The problem is most severe in countries that line the South China Sea, namely China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam, where 75% of the plastics waste drifting in the ocean originates. Much of these floating plastics

Arlington National Cemetery has provided a solemn place to reflect upon the sacrifices made by the men and women of the United States Armed Forces since its founding in 1864. Yet years of accreted function and the rapidly expanding body of tourists visiting has generated an enormous burden to the capacity of the cemetery entrance, the once elegant arrival experience has now become fragmented and chaotic, failing to reflect the beauty of the cemetery. How can we reconfigure this basic rudiment of arrival into grace?

The proposal tries to redefine the starting point of this journey to the most hallowed shrine in the United States with elegance, respect, and function. Through careful vertical separation and elevation change, the proposal has expanded the capacity of the site, accommodated, and enhanced the arrival experience for all. The proposal has also addressed the administrative function of the entrance, including vehicular control, security chec

Boston Harbor Islands National and State Park served as the most significant recreational space in Eastern Massachusetts. As the most popular destination for locals and tourists, the park system also served as a significant ecological habitat for local wildlife, especially migratory birds and marine animals.

Facing the challenge of climate change and sea level rise, the historical remnants and precious habitats of Boston Harbor will be gradually submerged by

In the southern suburb of Krakow, Poland there sits the former Plaszow Concentration Camp, arguably the most important Holocaust site in Poland as portrayed by director Steven Spielberg in his 1993 movie Schindler's List. Being a nature reserve for basically the past seven decades, the Plaszow area is now beginning to emerge alternative voices –– at least some have wished to use the site as a de-facto city park. Therefore, memory and/or forgetting is the pressing issue of the site right now.

Instead of traditional architecture- or monument-based approach, this thesis proposes a successional landscape design strategy to address the dilemma of memory and/or forgetting in the site, and tests such an anti-monument strategy in the most challenging area of the site, two pre-war Jewish cemeteries. With plants and gravels as dominating design elements, this thesis aims to subtly transform the pre-war Jewish cemetery area into a naturally evolved place that

In Mongolia a new type of urbanized landscape called ger district has emerged that combines the nomadic yurt settlement pattern with informal urban settlement at the periphery of Ulaanbaatar. This neighborhood lack basic utilities and services such as heating and sewage. With the increasingly harsh winters, this area's social and environmental system will face even more pressures.

The project's topic is community beyond the fence. Instead of removing and

Retreat Yourself: Moving Ground, Preserving Place considers the process of coastal retreat by reconfiguring current rights of property ownership within a residential suburb of Quincy, MA. With impending sea level rise and increased rates of coastal flooding, we advocate that the expression of the right to use and the right to own property must radically alter and de-couple, and begin to incorporate the right to leave and the right to remain in place under

The study area is in Guangzhou, the Pearl River Delta, China, a region with a complex landscape system featuring agricultural production and wetland. The coastal disasters such as storm surge and seawater intrusion have always been a risk for most of the agricultural land, which is lower than the local mean sea level. Therefore, an adaptive agriculture model is needed to deal with the greater risk caused by sea level rise.

Based on traditional reclamation ag

Oakland's homeless residents made up 52.7% of Alameda County's homeless population. An estimated 68% of them were African American and approximately one-third of homeless people are suffering from mental illnesses. As property values skyrocket in Oakland, there are lots of vacant parcels scattered throughout the City's neighborhoods, occupied by homeless encampments. At the same time, Communities of color, low-income and homeless have been devastated by the War on

The project recognizes and takes advantage of the short-term positive impact of climate change on the ALAAS thermal karst lake region while focusing on the sustainable development of the more resilient civilization. It focuses on the changing mechanism of permafrost ecosystems and the mechanism of plant community degradation succession. By optimizing plant community allocation, planning semi-natural areas, and constructing elastic ecological facilities, the project

In May 2019, UNEP published an article entitled 'Air pollution hurts the poorest most', which shows that every year about 7 million people worldwide die from air pollution and most of them come from developing countries, particularly in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Air pollution is a universal problem in many developing countries while airborne particulate matter is the most direct and harmful air pollutant to humans. Through a year-long environmental experiment

The project examines the impact of transboundary water politics on water supply and the access rights in the Jordan River Basin. It proposes a new design framework that enables an inclusive and participatory new strategic plan for a decentralized system to achieve water security at the community level and to resolve conflicts at the regional level. It offers a viable alternative to the current centralized water management system and proposes to assert water securit

This research explores the potential for co-creation between animals and designers to restore ecological function to underperforming landscapes. Co-creation, in this case, is where animals participate in the design process in ways that are collaborative, functional and efficient. Findings suggest that designers may co-create landscapes with animals by harnessing functions like seed dispersal, pollination, soil aeration, construction of habitat structures, nutrient

This project investigates how cultural heritage can be conserved within the Turpan Prefecture of Xinjiang, China in which the karez heritage agrosystem intersects with other types of landscape based heritage. With the agricultural techniques of Turpan recognized as a Nationally Important Agricultural Heritage System, and with Turpan's karez wells on the nomination list for World Heritage inscription, there is opportunity to rethink how cultural heritage is managed

Ground Up is the student-run journal of the Department of Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning at University of California, Berkeley. Published annually, each issue centers on a theme of contemporary relevance with interdisciplinary possibilities. Articles and artworks are gathered through an open call for submissions, so naturally the journal is guided by the interests of our readers and collaborators—from students to professionals, academics to practit

Landscape design concepts and processes, particularly in public projects with many stakeholders, can often be hard to communicate due to the disparate levels of engagement with communities as well as the context in which the communication takes place. The integration of landscape design thinking with everyday games not only functions as a communication device between players, but also gives people more agency in participatory design processes. The products of this

Stone Wall Tree is a collection of landscape artifact unique to Hong Kong's geomorphology, urban density and climate. It refers to a series of trees growing spontaneously on the vertical surface of masonry stone retaining walls since British Hong Kong. Currently, most studies on these trees are only around their impacts on retaining walls from an engineering perspective. Their cultural significance and ecological value to the local community is largely underestimat

“Before the City, there was the Sand” explores the issue of urban flooding in the southern Chicago region through a deep reading of its geological history. The soils and surficial sediments—the sands in particular—are an important part of the hydro-geologic and geographic history of the Great Lakes region. This project calls for a “re-surfacing" of the sands in the spatial and infrastructural design of the urban landscape relative to water and stormwater management

"The CincyStitch" is a multidisciplinary project that repositions a pivotal stretch of Cincinnati's waterfront not as the city's edge, but as the center of a connected region, allowing people to have a place to live, work, and play. Through four threads—Culture and History, Public Realm, Transportation/Infrastructure, and New Economies, the proposal strategically links and develops a formally vacant downtown site to create connections and break down barriers across

Small but gradual changes can be powerful. Since 2012, the Seoul Metropolitan Government has been implementing the "72 Hour Urban Action" competition to change leftover urban spaces, challenging professional and local participants to collaboratively design and build public space projects just in 3 days and nights. Starting from seven neglected urban pockets, today a total of sixty-six sites have been transformed into lively urban public spaces.

Our team is o