The backyard as a distinct space has not always been with us. It is, according to the cultural landscape historian Paul Groth, a relatively recent invention that was made possible by technological innovations in the 1930s and 1940s.
The October 2022 issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine is the annual awards issue devoted to showcasing the ASLA Student and Professional Award winners, as well as the ASLA Honors recipients.
The Student Awards jury, led by Mark Hough, FASLA, reviewed 459 projects in eight categories and named just 19 award winners, including five Awards of Excellence. Dennis Otsuji, FASLA, chaired the 11-member Professional Awards jury, which reviewed 506 submissions across seven categories and awarded 28.
The efforts of the Student Award winners revealed a growing concern over the impacts of climate change and the need to solve problems with a combination of rigorous research and imaginative designs. Students are clearly looking forward to a future in which landscape interventions can make a real difference on the local and global scales.
In the Professional Awards, look for projects that focus on social justice, climate resilience, site responsiveness, and financial feasibility. The winning teams vigorously pursued community input, often in inventive ways. Jurors were impressed with approaches that asked the right questions and laid a foundation on which other landscape architects could build.
Among the ASLA Honors is the Bradford Williams Medal. LAM’s Editorial Advisory Committee selects two Bradford Williams Medal awards each year, one published in LAM and one in a mainstream publication, that demonstrate excellence in writing about landscape architecture.
For writing in LAM, the winner is “Paths Forward,” by Katharine Logan, in LAM’s August 2021 issue, on the work of reconciliation in action in Canada.
For writing in the general media, the winner is “Manufacturing Nature,” by Eric Klinenberg, The New Yorker, August 9, 2021, on the work of Kate Orff, FASLA, and SCAPE.
As landscape architecture becomes more visible to the public in this era of climate emergency, the ability of journalists to write critically about the role of design and landscape is particularly vital.
Also in this issue:
This article is also available in Spanish
Rare is the landscape architecture client who enjoys a view of decay out their window. Continue reading A Wilder West
Nothing excites Anna Thurmayr and Dietmar Straub, ASLA, more than bringing high-concept landscape architecture to places where it is traditionally absent—remote communities, inner-city schoolyards, peri-urban land awaiting tract homes. Continue reading Have Van, Will Garden
LAM is highlighting student and professional winners from the 2021 ASLA Awards by asking designers to share an outtake that tells an important part of their project’s narrative.
Weicong Huang
“The rendering shows local wetland restoration, in process and after. In the gray frame, the ship is ejecting stored sediment into the wetland and people are planting native weeds. Continue reading Awards Focus: The Death and Life of Great American Barges
Outside the kitchen door of the Massachusetts farm where Stephen (Steve) Stimson, FASLA, and his wife and partner, Lauren Stimson, ASLA, live with their two kids is a water feature created by Steve in the agrarian spirit of thrift. Continue reading In Their Elements
As Canada comes to terms with a brutal colonial legacy, two landscape architect-led plans light the way toward reconciliation.
Across the Yukon River from Dawson City, up around 64 degrees latitude, the Top of the World Highway wends its way over 65 miles of unglaciated landscape to the border with Alaska. Continue reading Paths Forward
