Reimagining Angel's Knoll: Celebrating the 2026 Emerging Professionals Design Competition Winners

ASLA is proud to announce the winners of the 2026 Emerging Professionals Design Competition, which recognizes outstanding creativity, innovation, and design excellence from emerging voices in landscape architecture. Inspired by the 2026 ASLA Conference on Landscape Architecture theme, “Action! Design in Motion. Work in Progress.,” this year’s competition asked entrants to reimagine Angel’s Knoll, a small but highly visible and currently inaccessible open space on Bunker Hill. Located beside the historic Angels Flight Railway and across from Grand Central Market, the site offers sweeping views, steep topography, and strong transit access—while also presenting urgent questions around accessibility, climate resilience, equity, and public space.  

This exciting competition, now in its second year, was created by the ASLA Associate Advisory Committee, dedicated to serving and representing emerging professionals nationally. We’d like to extend a special thanks to Richard Asirifi, ASLA; Van Le, Associate ASLA; Valeriia Tolkacheva, Associate ASLA for their committee leadership.

The jury for this competition included Melanie Buffa, ASLA (Agency Artifact); Kona Gray, FASLA, PLA, ASLA Immediate Past President (EDSA); Dawn Dyer, ASLA (Studio MLA); Jessica Henson, ASLA, PLA, AICP (OLIN); Jared McKnight, ASLA, Assoc. AIA (WRT); Chelina Odbert, Hon. ASLA (Kounkuey); Estello Raganit, ASLA (City of Somerville, MA); Sara Zewde, ASLA, PLA (Studio Zewde). Their expertise and thoughtful feedback were invaluable in selecting the winners.

First Place: Folding Angel's Knoll
By Yuehui Gong, Associate ASLA

The jury awarded first place to Folding Angel's Knoll for its exceptional cohesiveness of graphics, remarkable depth of thought, and compelling multi-media storytelling. Jurors were particularly struck by the richness of the phasing narrative from Year 0 to 20+, the grounding in geological processes, and the attention to the "everyday" as a place for people to come together. The submission was described as impeccable, with a graphic quality that beautifully illustrates how the site responds, evolves, and adapts over time.

Second Place (Tied): Action! Thermal Justice in Motion 
By Zitong Huang, Associate ASLA; Yiding Han, Associate ASLA; and Yuan Tian, ASLA

Action, Thermal Justice in Motion stood out for its creativity, clarity, and deep responsiveness to the site's history and future. The jury was particularly impressed by the team's framing of wealth as a thermal barrier and their clear concept diagrams around opening and reclaiming the site, connecting and planting, cooling and programming, and adapting for future-proofing, all in service of their vision of the site as "a climate refuge, a civic living room, and an ecological anchor." Jurors also praised the inclusive pathways and ramps and the strong connectivity to the surrounding community.

Second Place (Tied): SOIL HOLDS: MATTER, MEMORY, COMMONS 
By Jiewen Hu, Associate ASLA; Zicheng Zhao, Associate ASLA; and Zhijie Wang, Associate ASLA

SOIL HOLDS: MATTER, MEMORY, COMMONS stood out for its rigorously researched, community-engaged approach and striking graphic richness. The jury was particularly impressed by the process centered on the soil itself - uncovering, holding, feeding, growing, and establishing a new ecology from the ground up. Jurors called it one of the strongest and most graphically rich submissions in the competition, praising how the material cues and qualities reflected the soil while surfacing the site's erased histories, geologies, and memories.

Honorable Mentions

Two additional projects received honorable mentions:

Unlocking the Knoll — by Shuai Yuan, Associate ASLA; Pie Chueathue, Associate ASLA; and Zenith Zhang, Student ASLA

Reweaving the Hill — by Peixuan Wu, ASLA; Ellena Wong, Associate ASLA; and Liwei Shen, ASLA

The Emerging Professionals Design Competition provides an invaluable platform for early-career professionals to showcase their creativity and contribute to critical conversations about the future of landscape architecture. As the jury emphasized, these projects reflect the brilliance, passion, and design thinking of the next generation of leaders in the field.