On Friday, December 5, The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF), in partnership with the University of Southern California (USC) and SWA, will host Oberlander Prize Forum IV: Soak It Up at USC’s Bovard Auditorium. The focus will be on landscape architecture’s leadership role in addressing critical urban flooding and water management. The conference will be followed by a reception at USC hosted by PlayCore.

 

For many reasons, Los Angeles is an ideal laboratory to explore advancing water-management and design strategies through the lens of contemporary landscape architecture. Unprecedented and frequent climate events have taken place in Southern California and internationally, public- and private-sectors are exploring sponge cities as a water management tool, there is a need to tame the Los Angeles River; and—perhaps most critically—the successful voter’s measure approved “Measure W,” which generates $300 million annually to capture and treat stormwater for water security and improve water quality. Taken together, positioning Los Angeles municipalities to become “Water First” cities where water infrastructure is an integral part of creating nature-based solutions for people and nature to coexist. 

 

Conference speakers include leading Los Angeles practitioners from Design Workshop, OLIN, Studio – MLA, and SWA; international landscape architects (Adriaan Gueze, West 8 Rotterdam, Mario Schetjnan, GDU, Mexico City); academics (William Deverall, Alison Hirsh, USC); and critics from Los Angeles and beyond (Christopher Hawthorne, Patrick Sisson); who will examine provocative solutions to urban flooding.

 

An international panel—which originally included the late Oberlander Prize laureate Kongjian Yu and features 2025 Oberlander Laureate Mario Schjetnan—will dedicate their presentations to his memory for his significant contributions to the field. Panels will look at how the Los Angeles River and other water sources have been managed, the current challenges and solutions being implemented, and global strategies and perspectives offered by international leaders in the field. 

 

This event is part of the programming associated with the  Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize, a biennial honor with a $100,000 award and two years of public engagement activities. The work of the late 2023 laureate, Kongjian Yu, global champion of the “sponge-cites concept,” is the impetus for this conference. This idea has captured the attention of—and is being implemented by—landscape architects, urban planners, elected officials, and other key decision-makers around the world.

 

The conference will be preceded by a reception on Thursday, December 4, featuring an opening keynote at SWA’s Los Angeles studio by Lauren Bon, Metabolic Studio, and followed on Saturday, December 6, by mobile workshops that will go deep, with commentary offered by the project’s extended design teams, community leaders, and clients.