Landscape Architecture Students, Faculty Win National ASLA Awards

Student Awards

Four student team projects won ASLA student awards in the analysis and planning, research, and student collaboration categories.

Design Tactics for Climate-Based Migration in Biodiversity Corridors

Honor Award, Analysis and Planning Category
Student: Marybeth Campeau, Associate ASLA
Location: Bladen Lakes Area, NC
Faculty Advisor: Madalyn Baldwin, Associate ASLA

This project addresses biodiversity conservation through corridor design, exploring how the strategic application of design tactics at multiple sites and scales can facilitate climate-related movement as species track their ecological niche. The Nature Conservancy has identified “resilient and connected landscapes” across the US. These priority areas for conservation are linkages that could sustain the diversity of a region under a dynamically changing climate. This project examines the largest of these landscapes in NC’s Coastal Plain, resulting in a scalable framework for analyzing, planning, and designing for climate-related species movement. Applied broadly, this model could reduce the catastrophic effects of biodiversity loss.

Advancing Trauma-Informed Landscape Architecture

Honor Award, Research Category
Student: Lauren Joca, Associate ASLA
Location: Raleigh, NC
Faculty Advisor: Celen Pasalar

Communities are challenged with climate change, habitat loss, and social conflicts resulting in trauma experienced by individuals and held in the land. Traumatizing land use causes physical, ecological, or contextual damage to landscapes. Sites cannot be healed without understanding and rectifying the trauma imposed on the land. This research explores the site elements that are essential to understanding landscape trauma. It also examines how a revelatory site inventory can produce trauma-informed site programming. Using prisons as an example of traumatized sites, the study identifies programming priorities that promote strategies for healing. The framework developed has the potential to apply across a variety of traumatized land uses.

On the Edge: A Climate Adaptive Park for the Battleship NC Memorial

Award of Excellence, Student Collaboration Category
Students: Marguerite Kroening, Student ASLA; Stella Wang, Student ASLA
Location: Wilmington, NC
Faculty Advisors: Andrew Fox, FASLA; David Hill, FAIA

On the Edge proposes a redesign for the parklands surrounding the Battleship North Carolina. The reimagined site celebrates a challenging narrative of place that reveal and highlight multifaceted histories while embracing infiltrating water. The new park transcends physical composition, serving as a dynamic memorial space connecting people, time, ecology, and climate through the goals of integration, adaptability, preservation, and restoration. The design proposes numerous site-specific community amenities, including a visitor center, moveable tidal pavilion, memorial bridge, and hybrid shoreline. The result is a destination park that adapts to water as the climate and site shift, allowing the memorial to withstand the test of time.

Dynamic Roots

Honor Award, Student Collaboration Category
Students: Dillon Patel, Student ASLA; Joseph Lamonica, Student ASLA; Stephany Luna-Rivas, Student ASLA
Location: Wilmington, NC
Faculty Advisors: Andrew Fox, FASLA; David Hill, FAIA

Dynamic Roots reimagines Wilmington’s Battleship Park, merging innovative design, collaborative work, and a deep reverence for the site’s historical and ecological context. Crafted by a trio of diverse design students, the project skillfully integrates various disciplines. Working with park staff and design professionals, the design simultaneously honors the park’s heritage and addresses climate change. Dynamic Roots enhances the public space, offering a sustainable, accessible environment that celebrates Battleship North Carolina’s legacy. This project stands as a testament to landscape architecture’s resilient future, showcasing a visionary blend of past, present, and future.

Professional Awards

Faculty at the College of Design were recognized not only as applicants for this year’s awards, but also for their greater body of work.

Nicks Creek Longleaf Reserve Conservation & Management Plan

Honor Award, Analysis and Planning
Group: Coastal Dynamics Design Lab
Location: West End, NC
Client: Pine Forest Management and Southern Conservation Trust

The Coastal Dynamics Design Lab (CDDL) received an honor award in the analysis and planning category from ASLA for 2023. Their project, Nicks Creek Longleaf Reserve Conservation & Management Plan, analyzed and created a conservation master plan for the restoration, adaptive management, and use of a 1600-acre patch of Longleaf Pine forest in the Sandhills ecoregion. The Sandhills are a physiographic region in the southeastern U.S. that supports unique species and ecological communities, many of which are threatened or endangered. Longleaf Pine ecosystems are rated as the third most endangered ecosystem in the Southeast. The project site contains three (of four) ecological communities identified as regional conservation targets: Longleaf Pine Mosaic, Streamhead Pocosin/Seep, and Blackwater Stream. The resulting plan and programmatic recommendations are guiding the management of this rare and important ecosystem remnant.

Emily McCoy elevated to Fellow

Election to the ASLA Council of Fellows is among the highest honors the ASLA bestows on members and is based on their work, leadership/management, knowledge and service. Among the 48 members elected in 2023 is Emily McCoy, FASLA, PLA, SITES AP, an associate professor of practice at NC State and a principal at Design Workshop.

Emily is a leading practitioner and innovator in landscape performance in environmental design and has long been committed to evidence-based design. She experiments with emerging technologies that have added value to countless sites and clients, resulting in award-winning designs that protect and enhance environmental function. As a national leader in the use of drone and sensor technologies to create smart landscapes that provide site data in real-time, Emily’s groundbreaking research and publication in measurement and testing for landscape performance has been transformational to landscape architecture practice.

Charles A. Flink II receives the LaGasse Medal

Chuck Flink, FASLA, is an award-winning author and landscape architect who during his 40-year career has completed work in 250 communities, 35 states, and 7 foreign countries. He is the recipient of four dozen national, regional and local awards, and has served on governing boards for American Trails, East Coast Greenway and the 911 National Memorial Trail. He was recognized as the 2023 winner of the ASLA LaGasse Medal.

“Landscape architecture has inspired and empowered me to pursue my passion for conserving our planet’s precious natural resources and at the same time designing landscapes that improve daily life. Throughout my career, I also enjoyed building priceless long-term friendships that have enriched my personal and professional journey.”

Notable works include the Anne Springs Close Greenway, South Carolina; Charleston County Greenbelt Plan, South Carolina; Miami River Greenway, Florida; Grand Forks Greenway, North Dakota; Razorback Greenway in Arkansas; and Grand Canyon Greenway, Arizona. Chuck has authored three books about greenways and trails: Greenways. A Guide to Planning, Design and Development, Trails for the Twenty-First Century, and The Greenway Imperative: Connecting Communities and Landscapes for A Sustainable Future.