Faculty, alumni earn national landscape architecture accolades
Four Buckeyes received 2022 American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) awards, which honor the best in landscape architecture from around the globe.
Landscape Architecture Assistant Professor Halina Steiner and Civil, Environmental and Geodetic Engineering Assistant Professor Ryan Winston received a 2022 ASLA Honor Award in the research category for their project, Curbing Sediment: A Proof of Concept. The research reimagines curb design to capture pollutants that accumulate on the road—including sediment, nutrients from lawn fertilizers, bacteria, pesticides, metals and petroleum by-products—before they can be washed into waterways via sewers during storms.
The research team triple-tested 21 prototypes, proving that redesigning curb, gutter and apron standards can be a viable option for collecting pollutants on roadways, especially when done in concert with green infrastructure. Both Steiner and Winston are co-investigators on the work, with Steiner serving as project lead and inventor.
The awards jury noted that “there are many places where landscape design offers new ways to address overlooked bits of infrastructure. This is a significant contribution to materials-based research methods and could have a notable impact on cities and water quality.”
Alumna Kerry Leung ’22 (MS, landscape architecture) received ASLA’s 2022 premier student recognition, the Award of Excellence in the analysis and planning category.
Leung was recognized for her directed research project, Street Trees of New Orleans: Rethinking Tree Practices for a Fluctuating City, which examined how the ecological effectiveness of street trees in New Orleans is hampered by a patchwork system for implementation and care.
“The care of street trees needs to expand from individual trees, or even the scale of streets and neighborhoods, to robust city-wide systems,” described Leung in her project statement. “The well-established system of medians in New Orleans offers great opportunities for redesigning a new tree care system that is city-wide, but still has the capacity to be highly nuanced and engaging for local needs."
The impressed awards jury described the project’s merits as, “With skill and finesse, this project successfully tackles the tangible and acute problems associated with caring for the character-defining and long-suffering street trees in urban New Orleans. Using an evocative and effective graphic style, the detailed analysis is translated into a series of ingenious and realistic solutions that municipalities will be able to understand, advocate, and implement. The beauty, rigor, and thoughtfulness expressed elevates this project to the level of serious professional work.”
Landscape Architecture Section Head Kristi Cheramie, Associate Professor Paula Meijerink and Associate Professor Forbes Lipschitz served as faculty advisors for the project.
Landscape alumnus Adam Anderson (BSLA ’04) and his collaborative studio, Design Under Sky, received a 2022 ASLA Honor Award in the general design category for the 10,000 Suns: Highway to Park Project. The 10,000 Suns project is an annual summer-long botanical performance where over 10,000 sunflower seeds are planted on the site of a former section of Interstate 195, transforming vacant land into a bio-diverse and art-focused community space.
In 2022, ASLA recognized just 28 professional awardees from 506 entries and 19 student awardees from 459 entries.
with contributions from the Knowlton School
