From the October 2014 issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine:
Several faculty members at different schools recently have told me, unbidden, that remarkable numbers of their landscape architecture students want to find work that has a social impact, such as with a nonprofit or NGO group, after they graduate. To judge by this year’s run of ASLA Student Awards in this issue, it would seem they are having no trouble finding worlds of need. There is a playground designed and built for 350 children at an AIDS orphanage in South Africa, and a project for people in an informal settlement in Lima, Peru. There are two projects that directly benefit military veterans. Another considers the tangible ways people attach to a place as they grow old. And, of course, examples of ecological redemption abound. What I think we are seeing is a natural impulse to do good, compounded by a much greater awareness among young people today of the importance of community service, which is being ingrained in and required of them before they finish high school. Added to that are the signs of starker inequality, food scarcity, and climate volatility that are getting through to students and sticking with them.
In that regard, this issue, with the awards for students plus the ASLA Professional Awards and the Landmark Award, is all good news, which is why we look forward to doing it so much each year. This is our fourth year combining the student and professional awards in one rather mind-opening and deeply heartening package. There are 21 student winners chosen from 313 entries; 34 professional winners emerged from 596 entries. Seriously, if you need a lift as much of the world seems bent on coming unglued, read this magazine.
Many of these projects, imagined or built, originate in some kind of distress or disjuncture. They aim to resolve it in the ways that only design thinking can, with singular responses reliant on the specific physiology of a site. I was taken by the number of projects in which “abandoned by industry” was an operative phrase. The professional jury was looking mainly for great design; the group they chose just happened to include several sites where land had been aggressively exploited, polluted, and then left behind: the Zidell Yards site in Portland; the city of Liupanshui, China; Hudson River Park and Hunter’s Point South Park in New York; the Urban Outfitters campus in Philadelphia; and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation campus in Seattle. Two neighborhood plans, one for Detroit and one for Little Rock, are meant to remake vibrant city neighborhoods hit by the kind of social abandonment to which we’ve become entirely too accustomed in this country; they build on what remains.
The best residential designs of the year share not merely an evolved respect but an exaltation of their localities, in Louisiana, Texas, Maine, and elsewhere. It is also reassuring to see two excellent residential design projects in the student awards, one for an affordable housing development. Housing in general is a scarce pursuit among academic studios; in some years, the juries struggle to award anything in the residential category for students.
This awards issue, perhaps more so than the other issues we publish in a year, has an unabashed missionary purpose. We hope you’ll share it with as many people as possible—clients, city leaders, family, friends, collaborators in other professions, your dentist. It is one of the easiest and most exciting ways to show the spectrum of works in which landscape architects are immersing themselves today, and the leadership they provide in bringing together so many disciplines in the stewardship of living, natural systems. The full issue is free online at Zinio.com, or through our website, landscapearchitecturemagazine.org. Complete project briefs and all the project images are available at asla.org. Whether you entered the awards or won or neither, you can show others with pride what you and your colleagues in landscape architecture are accomplishing in an often daunting, challenging world.
You can read the full table of contents for October 2014 here, and as always, you can buy this issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine at more than 200 bookstores, including many university stores and independents, as well as at Barnes & Noble. You can also buy single digital issues for only $5.25 at Zinio or order single copies of the print issue from ASLA. Annual subscriptions for LAM are a thrifty $59 for print and $44.25 for digital. Our subscription page has more information on subscription options.
Keep an eye out here on the blog, on the LAM Facebook page, and on our Twitter feed (@landarchmag), as we’ll be ungating some October pieces as the month rolls out.
Credits: Landmark Award, Ed Wonsek; Professional Research Award of Excellence, Design Workshop Inc., U.S. Census, Esri; Professional General Design Award of Excellence, Sean Airhart (NBBJ); Professional Communications Award of Excellence, Courtesy the Cultural Landscape Foundation; Professional Residential Design Award of Excellence, Rebecca A. O’Neal, Affiliate ASLA/Jeffrey Carbo Landscape Architects.
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