The American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) has announced the winning projects for this year’s Student Awards. This accolade is given out annually in recognition of outstanding achievement in landscape architecture education across eight categories.
A total of 19 projects from a 459-strong entry list were selected by a jury comprised of members from the public and private sectors. Each winner was selected for a number of criteria, including the quality of their design, context, environmental sensitivity, and overall value to the client, community, and designers.
"Students are the future of this profession, so it’s encouraging and inspiring to see the full range of creativity, passion and talent that is evident among this year’s cohort of Student Award winners," shared ASLA’s CEO Torey Carter-Conneen. "Many of this year’s Student Award winners are focused on helping communities adapt to climate change, from addressing drought and extreme heat to mitigating wildfire risk and rising sea levels—clearly, landscape architects are a key part of the climate change solution."
GENERAL DESIGN CATEGORY
Award of Excellence - Nature’s Song – An Interactive Outdoor Music and Sound Museum by Travis Johnson of Ball State University
Jury comments: "Love the juxtaposition of music, landscape, and water! The design is so complete, thoughtful, and creative that it could have been done by a professional firm."
Honor Award
URBAN DESIGN CATEGORY
Honor Award
RESIDENTIAL DESIGN CATEGORY
Honor Award
ANALYSIS & PLANNING CATEGORY
Award of Excellence - Street Trees of New Orleans - Rethinking Tree Practices for a Fluctuating City by Kerry Shui-kay Leung of The Ohio State University
Jury comments: "With skill and finesse, this project successfully tackles the tangible and acute problems associated with caring for the character-defining and long-suffering street trees in urban New Orleans. Using an evocative and effective graphic style, the detailed analysis is translated into a series of ingenious and realistic solutions that municipalities will be able to understand, advocate, and implement. The beauty, rigor, and thoughtfulness expressed elevates this project to the level of serious professional work."
Honor Award
COMMUNICATIONS CATEGORY
Award of Excellence - Landscape Travels by Chloe Gillespie of Kansas State University
Jury comments: "This inventive project connected people with landscapes and landscape architects through social media and provided inspiration to many during the pandemic."
Honor Award
RESEARCH CATEGORY
Honor Award
STUDENT COLLABORATION: GENERAL DESIGN CATEGORY
Award of Excellence - Carbon in the Tidewater by Leigh Muldrow, Ryan McCune, DJ Bromely, Christophe Fettke von Koeckritz, Delaney Pilotte, and Kevin Ganjon of the University of Delaware
Jury comments: "With a team made up of landscape architecture, engineering, environmental science, and political science students, this project proposes innovative solutions to growing coastal problems due to climate change. In addition to creating off-shore breakwaters made up of "3D printed formless concrete plates that lock together, supported by a recycled concrete and reclaimed dredge material core," proposals include converting residential lawns to carbon gardens that sequester carbon and help improve water quality in Tidewater, Virginia. The sophistication of the project is captured in the careful analysis and informative diagrams."
STUDENT COLLABORATION: ANALYSIS & PLANNING CATEGORY
Honor Award
STUDENT COMMUNITY SERVICE CATEGORY
Award of Excellence - Seeding Resilience: Celebrating Community, Education, and the Environment at Princeville Elementary School by Spencer Stone, Madison Sweitzer, William Stanton, Rebecca Asser, Sarah Hassan; Martha Tack, Anna Edwards, Tianyu Shen, Ruixin Mao, and Sara Fetty of North Carolina State University
Jury comments: "This powerful project proves the critical role landscape architecture can play in creating healthy and equitable communities in even the most challenging conditions."
Honor Award
Learn more about this year's student award winners here.
Peja Culture Pavilion
Register by Wed, Dec 11, 2024
Submit by Tue, Jan 28, 2025
Pape Info Point
Register by Tue, Nov 19, 2024
Submit by Wed, Dec 18, 2024
Denver Single-Stair Housing Challenge
Register by Thu, Dec 12, 2024
Submit by Thu, Jan 23, 2025
The Buildner UNBUILT Award 2025 / 100,000€ Prize
Register by Thu, Mar 6, 2025
Submit by Thu, Nov 20, 2025
2 Comments
Believe there is a missing word "Dredge Ecologies: Climate-Adaptive Strategies for a Changing Island in a Changing"?
In response to the ASLA Student Award
of Excellence for Street Trees of New
Orleans: Rethinking Tree Practices for a Fluctuating City by Kerry
Shui-Kay Leung (LAM, October 2022), the New
Orleans Department of Parks and Parkways would like to encourage
all students to conduct primary research and reach out to the stewards of the
public realm when these areas are the focus of your research. Although not contacted for this study, the
Department is always eager to assist researchers in conducting primary data
collection and analysis regarding our urban forest. For instance, in
addition to two ongoing long term studies being conducted at our Brechtel
Nature Park, we are currently working with the Southern Climate Impacts
Planning Program at Louisiana State University to find a research-based
solution to the impact of neutral ground parking by measuring the correlation
between street flooding potential, insurance claims for car flooding, and
locations of nearby neutral grounds.
As a C40
City, New Orleans is committed to urgent action to confront the climate crises. In
the past four years, we have embarked on an ambitious reforestation
campaign, including a citywide tree inventory, mass tree planting initiatives
for underserved neighborhoods, public tree giveaways, a reforestation master
plan to ensure equitable distribution of canopy coverage, new forestry
policies, a new citywide parks master plan, and much more. Of the over
13,800 trees planted or underway on neutral grounds, rights-of-way, and parks
since 2018, over 85 percent were sourced locally in Louisiana; this year
100 live oaks were planted that were grown in New Orleans from local acorns.
Departmental planting specifications (freely
available online) and longstanding policy requires trees to be sourced
from growers at a latitude of not more than 200 miles north or south of New
Orleans. While we have worked hard to successfully to cultivate nonprofit
partnerships to facilitate our mission to reforest the city, public funding
accounted for approximately 23 percent of the tree installations since 2018. We
continue to face many challenges to our urban forest, including removal of
trees on private property, the decimation of our palm populations, tropical
storm impacts and the accelerated costs of operations in a time of limited
municipal funding; however, the City of New
Orleans and our non-profit tree planting partners take pride in the progress
that we have made in our effort to become more resilient in the face of climate
change and take our role as stewards of the New Orleans urban forest very
seriously.
Brittany Mulla McGovern
Secretary of the Department of Parks & Parkways
1 Green Parade Lane
New Orleans, Louisiana 70122