Studio-MLA has received the 2021 National Design Award in Landscape Architecture from Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.

The interim director of Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, Ruki Neuhold-Ravikumar, announced the winners of the 2021 National Design Awards earlier this year. Given in nine jury-selected award categories, the recipients include the West Coast-based design studio integrating landscape architecture, urban design, and planning to create places that inspire human connection, unite communities, and restore environmental balance.

“We are humbled by this honor and deeply proud of our team’s achievements,” says Mia Lehrer, a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects (FASLA) and the founder and president of Studio-MLA. “We’re also indebted to our collaborators—visionary clients, nonprofit partners, and design teams—for their commitment to building places that create social justice and equity, and that tell the stories layered within places: stories of people, neighborhoods, hope and conflict, water, air, ecology, and empowerment.”

Adds Lehrer, “We also acknowledge our elected officials and government leaders, along with our tenacious environmental organizations that keep California front and center of the global dialogue on resilience.”

This year, Cooper Hewitt celebrates 22 years of recognizing outstanding achievement in design. The National Design Awards honor innovation and impact, recognizing the power of design to change the world. Launched in 2000 as an official project of the White House Millennium Council, the awards increase national awareness of design’s impact.

Studio-MLA’s projects include Fair Park Community Park in Dallas, San Francisco’s Levi’s Plaza, SoFi Stadium, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, the outdoor museum Destination Crenshaw, the L.A. County Natural History Museum, Vista Hermosa Park, Beverly Gardens, Berggruen Institute, and Dodger Stadium. The firm’s 20-plus years of urban river-related projects including the Rio Tietê in São Paulo, the Los Angeles River Revitalization Plan, the Upper Los Angeles River and Tributaries Revitalization Plan, and eight park sites now underway along the Santa Ana River in Riverside, Calif.

Jury members for the 2021 Cooper Hewitt National Design Award are Kofi Boone, professor, North Carolina State University; Billy Fleming, University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design; Joe Gebbia, cofounder, Airbnb; Kristine Johnson, cofounder, Cognition Studio, Inc.; Grace Jun, assistant professor of graphic design, University of Georgia, and CEO, Open Style Lab; and Patricia Saldaña Natke, principal, Urban Works Ltd.