ASLA Announces Student Award Winners

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) has announced the recipients of its 2005 Student Awards. The awards will be presented during the ASLA Annual Meeting and EXPO, Oct. 7-10, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. The jury selected 16 projects representing 13 schools to receive awards in six categories.

“We had more than 270 entries this year and that’s the most we’ve ever had,” said Ann Looper, director of public relations and resource development for ASLA. “There are more students from more schools than ever before participating in this event, and that shows what a big success it really is.”

Looper notes that the ASLA Student Awards program has recently undergone some changes, including moving the program from the membership division of the organization to the public relations division. Additionally, the call for entries, judging and award announcements, are now being scheduled to coincide more with ASLA’s professional awards. “2005 was the first year we combined the Student Awards with the Professional Awards and put them under the same system,” Looper says. “It seemed to work very well and we got good reports from the students, faculty, schools and jurors who participated.”

Additionally, Looper notes that ASLA recently changed the criteria for the Student Awards to more mirror those of the Professional Awards. “In the past, students were asked to submit their projects on boards along with a research paper,” she says. “With that type of format, you couldn’t compress the entire scope of a project onto a single board and the jurors could tell that there was probably more to the project that couldn’t be conveyed.”

Now, Looper says students can submit their projects in portfolio format that allows more flexibility. “The portfolios can include a written description of the project and 10 to 15 images to go along with it,” she explains. “That gives entrants the flexibility to include imagery, photos, graphs and a lot of other media that let the jurors see the depth and breadth of the project.”

This year’s seven-member Student Awards jury included landscape architecture professionals, educators and others who could bring unique perspectives to the judging. Fritz Steiner, dean of the school of architecture at the University of Texas, chaired the jury and commented on the students’ work and how their educations will benefit them as they move into their professional careers.

“There’s a much greater use of computer technology in the landscape architecture field today and what students can do graphically because of computers is just amazing,” Steiner told Lawn & Landscape. He says technology is just one of the differences between current landscape architecture programs and those that landscape architects in the industry today had at their disposal when they were in school. “Today’s students are also displaying very strong research skills, so there’s a heavy emphasis on both the technical and intellectual skills that up-and-coming landscape architects will display.”

Steiner says he was truly impressed by a new category in the ASLA Student Awards program this year. “The amount of collaboration shown between the landscape architecture students and other disciplines, and also the range of those disciplines was impressive,” he says. “Being able to work with professionals outside of this particular field is incredibly important and these students showed that they understood that and will be able to collaborate with their colleagues once they move into the corporate world. I really applaud ASLA for opening up the competition to include other disciplines.”

Looper says the student collaboration category was a favorite among jurors. “Everyone really loved that category, which required students to work on a project that included non-landscape architecture majors,” she says. “We saw work from students who focused on architecture, history, sociology – a number of different majors – but what was fascinating was how seamlessly all the sections came together. The jurors felt these students were very well prepared for entering the profession and working with their future colleagues.”

A list of this year’s Student Award winners is below. Additional information on each winning project, including the collaborative projects, analysis and planning projects, research papers, community service and communications projects is available on the ASLA Web site.