Yellowhorn Farm Park: Battling The Threat of Desertification, designed by China Construction Design Group, in Inner Mongolia, China. 2019 ASLA Honor Award in General Design winner. #LandscapeArchitecture #ASLAawards #NationalASLAWinner #ASLAProAwards2019
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Project Statement: The Yellowhorn Farm Park project, built in 2014, is a 150-acre hilltop of yellowhorn farmland located in Aohan County in Inner Mongolia, China. Inner Mongolia is China’s third largest province, and has been battling severe desertification for over a century. Over-grazing, logging, expanding farms, population pressure, wind, and drought have all turned this once-fertile grassland into sandy a plain. In the past 20 years, approximately three million acres of desert have been rehabilitated through enormous local and national effort. This project site is one of the most representative fields of this type of transformation, from severe desert to flourishing farm. The particular location of the overlook platform of this park was an onsite temporary office, during those years of fighting desertification, serving as a hub, providing space for observation, organization, rest, and service to thousands of workers devoted to fighting desertification. With an intention towards minimal environmental intervention, the landscape design team integrated historical resources (i.e., materials, plants, and construction methods) with contemporary uses (i.e., education, recreation, and technology integration) to commemorate several generations of effort to combat desertification and provide ecological, recreational, educational, and economic benefit to the local area.
Crosswinds Marsh Wetland Interpretive Preserve, designed by @smithgroup, in Sumpter Township, MI. 2019 ASLA Landmark Award. #LandscapeArchitecture #ASLAawards
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Project Statement: Originally created as recompense for wetland impacts during the expansion of Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport, Crosswinds Marsh has transformed into a treasure valued by both human and natural communities. Celebrating its 20th anniversary as one of the largest self-sustaining wetland mitigation projects in the country, Crosswinds Marsh has become a national benchmark for ecological restoration and environmental design. Most notably, the project recreated ecosystems for hundreds of native flora and fauna species by restoring over 1,000 acres of historical wetland ecosystems from former agricultural and residential uses.
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The technical design considered the pump-free hydrologic functions of the site to provide essential habitats that attract hundreds of animal species. While intentionally limiting direct human access, the site still serves as an invaluable educational and community resource with expansive permitted opportunities to observe critical habitat. The strategic site design also facilitated low-impact recreation like hiking, horseback riding, paddling, fishing and birding, leaving an indelible legacy that continues to offer numerous environmental learning opportunities for thousands of annual visitors to this day.
The @glenstonemuseum, designed by @pwpla, in #Potomac, MD. ASLA 2019 Honor Award in General Design. #LandscapeArchitecture #ASLAawards
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Project Statement: The Glenstone landscape integrates art, architecture and nature within a continuum of cultural experience and expression. An evolving spatial and sensorial journey unfolds as visitors leave their cars in the shade of a designed woodland and traverse this 200-acre designed landscape on foot. Through physical contact with the land as well as key moments of prospect across it, reflection on, and understanding of, landscape systems is foregrounded alongside world class art and architecture.
The Bentway, designed by PUBLIC WORK Office for Urban Design & Landscape Architecture, in #Toronto, Ontario, Canada. 2019 ASLA Honor Award in General Design. #LandscapeArchitecture #ASLAawards
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Project Statement: The Bentway re-imagines Toronto's most divisive symbol of 20th century transportation planning as a new model of shared public terrain able to capture the soul and spirit of the city. This project could only happen now because of a genuine need to be resourceful, innovative and bold with how we think about public space in our rapidly densifying cities. The project creates a 7-acre pioneering urban landscape conceived to support new forms of creative expression and public experience.
2019 ASLA Award of Excellence in Student Collaboration: Cultivating the Future: Designing and Constructing a Didactic Garden, designed by a team of students at @designbuildmsu, in Starkville, MS. (John-Taylor Corley, Associate ASLA; Murry Clif Rodgers, Associate ASLA; Zack McWilliams; James Hugh, Associate ASLA; Abbey Wallace, Student Affiliate ASLA; Eloisa De Leon, Student Affiliate ASLA; Heather Hardman; Morgan Linnett; Abbey Rigdon; Lauryn Rody; Haylee Upton; Meredith Morris; Nada Aziz, Austin Keaton; Robert Scott; Damion Hardy; Blake Farrar) #ASLAawards
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Project Statement: Designed to be a laboratory for learning, the didactic garden is a sustainable space for teaching, research, and outreach in support of local food. Designed and built by students in a collaborative studio with landscape architecture students leading architecture and graphic design students, the garden highlights the best of what each discipline can contribute to a collective design process. The garden has a simple but thoughtful design that works with the existing site to create a series of rooms associated with four terrace levels. A central walk and stair tie the rooms together creating a central axis for service and accessibility. Numerous educational elements are incorporated into the garden including Farmbots, a classroom space, and educational graphics. Incorporating technologies typically reserved for larger applications, the garden minimizes potable water consumption and maximizes efficiency through an automated water recovery, collection, filtration, and distribution system. Overall, the garden is an innovative landscape that has serves as a model for what urban agriculture could become as it is intentionally integrated into communities.
