2026 ASLA Professional Awards

Location: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Firm: Janet Rosenberg & Studio Inc.
Client: National Capital Commission (NCC)

Kìwekì means “to return to one’s homeland” in Algonquin. Kìwekì Point challenges what it means to design a park in a nation’s capital, inviting visitors to return to the river and the land. The park is conceived as a sensory landscape that shifts attention away from monumentality toward the Ottawa River valley. New landforms, pathways, and ecologically rich plantings frame views, engage sound and scent, and create spaces for gathering and dialogue. These design moves recontextualize two existing monuments within a broader landscape experience. Renamed by the host Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation, the park layers complex histories and restores Indigenous storytelling to the promontory, informed by extensive engagement and connection to place.

Location: Brooklyn, NY
Firm: SCAPE
Client: Gowanus Canal Conservancy; The Domain Companies; Property Markets Group; Monadnock Development

Building on decades of city, state, and federal planning efforts, the Gowanus Lowlands is a community-based vision for a restored public realm centered around Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal—a federal Superfund site and former marshland in a neighborhood recently rezoned for over 8,500 new housing units.

Anticipating a neighborhood in transition, a local stewardship group commissioned the Gowanus Lowlands as an action plan for positive change. The plan envisions an ecologically resilient and socially robust park network across public and private sites along the canal. Since the release of this urban design framework, three new privately owned public landscapes have opened, introducing a new generation of water-based public space in New York City.

Location: West Stockbridge, MA
Firm: Wagner Hodgson

This modern homestead was designed for a family with a passion for the arts and a deep connection to the region. The project was guided by three principles: (1) create dynamic spaces to support the needs for everyday residential living and large philanthropic events, (2) contribute to the cultural legacy of western Massachusetts, and (3) use sustainable practices to guide design and restore the ecological integrity of the site. A prominent view of Massachusetts's tallest peak offered an organizing framework, serving as the datum for architectural and landscape design. With these parameters, the project team explored creative and sustainable solutions to harmoniously blend a variety of spatial scales into a sensitive agrarian vernacular.

Location: Salt Lake City, UT
Firm: Design Workshop
Client: Wasatch Front Regional Council, Salt Lake County

Water flowing from the Oquirrh Mountains is a critical contributor to the Great Salt Lake. Severe drought and human-caused decline threaten the lake’s viability, with cascading impacts on ecosystems and public health. This regional collaboration of seven jurisdictions, the H2Oquirrh Vision Plan, undertakes a large systems analysis of hydrologic cycles, land cover, and land-use decisions to identify site-specific interventions across nine creeks and washes. Led by landscape architects and water resource engineers, the study advances a deeper understanding of localized drivers of water loss and proposes innovative solutions through integrated landscape infrastructure design and policy.

Firm: Meg Calkins, FASLA

For the last two years, average global temperatures spiked above the 1.5°C threshold set by the Paris Agreement for 2050 - 25 years early. Devastating storms and wildfires are increasing. In response, ASLA adopted an ambitious climate goal for all projects to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50% in just four years.

As materials used to build sites comprise most of the embodied carbon over the life of a landscape, site professionals urgently need information to reduce these carbon impacts. Details and Materials for Resilient Sites: A Climate Positive Approach, a gamechanger for our profession, fills a critical gap in the literature by providing leading-edge peer-reviewed information about climate positive site design.

Location: Chicago, IL
Firm: GGN
Client: Millennium Park Foundation

Chicago's Lurie Garden opened in 2004 and is now a globally recognized symbol and space for dialogue around urban landscape architecture, native-plant gardening, sustainable horticulture practices, insect-and-bird-focused data and experiments, inclusive public garden programming, and equitable training and recruitment into landscape and horticultural fields.