CLOSE AD ×

2011 ASLA Professional Awards Showcase Innovation & Sustainability

2011 ASLA Professional Awards Showcase Innovation & Sustainability

Earlier this week, we checked in with the student winners of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) 2011 awards and found reason to be hopeful about the future of landscape architecture. But what legacy will those students be inheriting? The ASLA has recently doled out 37 awards to professional firms from across the globe, honoring their innovation, design, and sustainability.  The submissions (most of which have been built) range from the systematic redesign of streetscapes and historical residential gardens to large scale estuarine master plans.

General Design Category
Award of Excellence

Portland Mall Revitalization
Portland, OR
ZGF Architects

From the project statement:

The Portland Mall, a landscape architecture legacy project and icon for progressive urban planning and design, has been transformed into a Great Street. Today it extends the entire length of downtown Portland, mixes multiple modes of transportation, stimulates adjacent development and re-establishes itself as Portland’s civic spine. A new benchmark in design, placemaking and infrastructure for the 21st century – the Portland Mall represents the region’s commitment to civic space, vital urban centers and sustainable transportation.

Honor Awards

City of Greensburg Main Street Streetscape
Greensburg, KS
BNIM

From the project statement:

The City of Greensburg developed a downtown environment that not only provides a unique environment for residents and visitors, but that also provides creative features that capture and recycle stormwater. This project is a part of an overall sustainable environment that was planned for the downtown business district. All components from planting and irrigation to seating, signage and materials are highly sustainable.

Citygarden
St. Louis, MO
Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects

From the project statement:

Citygarden is a three-acre public sculpture garden created on the Gateway Mall in downtown St. Louis. Sponsored by a private foundation, the garden has played a primary role in reinvigorating the city’s center.  The design weaves innovative stormwater management strategies with abstractions of local geology, hydrology, and plant communities to create a multi-faceted public space that has become a magnet for locals and tourists alike.

Residential Design Category
Honor Award

Beyond Pictorial: Revising Philip Johnson’s Monumental Beck House
Dallas, TX
Reed Hilderbrand

From the project statement:

Philip Johnson’s monumental 1964 Beck House was conceived as a theatrical viewing platform for the surrounding landscape—a motive pursued more simply and elegantly in Johnson’s own Glass House fifteen years earlier. The Beck House renovation, completed in 2009, critically revises this modernist paradigm. By deftly altering Johnson’s conceptual break-line between building and landscape, the project demonstrates landscape architecture’s capacity to integrate the conservation of the material legacy of a project with direct engagement of the visual, spatial, ecological, and domestic characteristics of the site.

Analysis and Planning Category
Award of Excellence

An Emerging Natural Paradise — Aogu Wetland Forest Park Master Plan
Taiwan
National Sun Yat-sen University

From the project statement:

Aogu is a 1,600-hectare site located on the route of Asian migrating birds. The site has been reclaimed from the sea and unexpectedly reverted to a coastal wetland because of land subsiding and the cessation of farming in the area. The project focuses on establishing a series of re-habitation strategies on site that is reclaimed for human development, and emphasizes the site as a seeding process for the natural systems, as well as environmental education and eco-tourism.

Communications Category
Award of Excellence

LID Low Impact Development: A Design Manual for Urban Areas
University of Arkansas Community Design Center

From the project statement:

Low Impact Development: A Design Manual for Urban Areas is designed for those involved in urban property development, from homeowners, to institutions, developers, designers, cities, and regional authorities. The manual presents a graphic argument, illustrating the application of ecologically-based stormwater treatment technologies in urban contexts. The manual’s unique contribution is its advancement of LID from a set of suburban lot-based technologies to a distributed urban treatment network deployed at neighborhood, municipal, and regional scales.

Landmark Award
in partnership with the National Trust for Historic Preservation

First San Diego River Improvement Project
San Diego, CA
Wimmer Yamada and Caughey

From the project statement:

Great examples of landscape design often go unrecognized because the finished look is so natural it is unnoticed as “man made” by the observer. The first phase of the “First San Diego River Improvement Project” or “FISDRIP” is a good example. In place of a planned concrete channel as envisioned by the Army Corps of Engineers, the project was a successful collaboration by Public Agencies, Engineers, Biologists and Landscape Architects in designing a highly sustainable and functional flood control system that respected and preserved the natural habitat. Originally completed in the late 1980’s, this project represents an excellent example of restorative design within an urban context, testimony to nature’s ability to heal itself, survive within a busy transportation corridor and provide human connections to the natural environment.

All of the award winning entries can be viewed here.

CLOSE AD ×