Announcing the 2021 BSLA Design Award Winners
Image above: Strategic Frameworks: 5 Cities in Afghanistan, by Sasaki. On previous page: from Cambridge Urban Forest Master Plan, by Reed Hilderbrand. Both projects are w
inners of a 2021 BSLA Excellence Award in Analysis and Planning.
On behalf of the Executive Committee of the Boston Society of Landscape Architects, we are pleased to announce this year’s Design Award Winners.
Congratulations!
About the BSLA Design Awards Program
Boston Society of Landscape Architects (BSLA) seeks to recognize excellence in the diverse practices of landscape architecture. Projects should demonstrate excellence and reflect the careful stewardship, wise planning, and artful design of our cultural and natural environment.
The jury determines that awarded projects merit recognition in one or more of the following areas:
• Exemplary social, cultural, educational, or environmental significance
• Outstanding quality, craftsmanship, creativity, or artistry
• Unique and innovative technologies, techniques, or concepts
• Advancement of the public’s awareness and perception of the field of landscape architecture
Awards may be granted in LANDMARK, PROFESSIONAL, and STUDENT categories, for design, analysis & planning, communication, and research projects. Student and Professional awards will be recognized at the levels of Excellence, Honor, and Merit. Starting this year, the jury may also recognize Emerging Firms and give Special Recognitions.
Landscape architects and students based in the BSLA Chapter area — Massachusetts and Maine — are eligible to submit, as well as projects sited within Massachusetts and Maine regardless of where the design office is located.
The process includes a two-stage, blind peer review. No identifying information about the designer is allowed.
These winners were announced in a live, online event Monday, June 28.
Congratulations to ALL of our new landscape architecture graduates, too!
And the Winners Are….
STUDENT AWARDS
Merit Awards
Island Park Re-Imagined - Hinsdale, New Hampshire
By: Justin Hailey, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Jury Comments: This project takes a specific ecological and industrial history but abstracts it in a memorable way and tells an interesting and easy to follow story, demonstrating a lovely, clear and compelling thought process. The hand drawings and roughness are refreshing and overall the project shows a remarkable and much appreciated amount of restraint.
Local Forest Coalition – Boston, MA
By: Echo Chen, Kongyun He and Michele Chen, Harvard Graduate School of Design
Jury Comments: The jury appreciated the approach of treating this like a handbook that could be used by different communities to invest in the management, with unique and interesting graphics and compelling representation methods. The project demonstrates an exciting and interesting concept, investing local residents in the management and creation of the built environment in their communities.
Slowlands: Making the Inter-Loughs Wilds - Northwest City Region, Ireland & Northern Ireland
By: Estello Raganit & Joan Chen, Harvard Graduate School of Design
Jury Comments: The jury appreciates the ambitiousness of taking on this polarizing topic, and doing so at a variety of scales--from global to national to microscopic. The jury was very impressed with the graphics, each of which feels like a work of art, and they were intrigued to see something that's not a site intervention--rather more of a thought intervention.
Layered Landscapes – Boston, MA
By: Stephen Rezendes & Allie Connell, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Jury Comments: The concept of making visible the multitude of infrastructures hidden from view is compelling. Moreover, the presentation was well thought out and well communicated. Jury members with close ties to the area and interests in infrastructure were inspired to dream about the proposal; thinking about technical aspects of how the interventions would work, methods of interpretation, and integration into the city experience.
Honor Award
After Plastics - Aletsch Glacier, Switzerland
By: Andreea Vasile-Hoxha, Harvard Graduate School of Design
Jury Comments: The jury found this to be a brilliant piece of research, in which siloed concepts became integrated thinking within a futuristic framework. The jury appreciated the exploration of ecological and botanical interventions in dealing with the emergence and persistence of microplastics, and found the communication strategy compelling and rich. The range of scales in thinking and graphic communication make for an impressive package.
Excellence Award
Retreating Plan - Wareham, Massachusetts
By: Minzhi Lin, Harvard Graduate School of Design
Jury Comments: The jury deemed this project an ambitious plan demonstrating incredible restraint. They celebrated the submission for its thoughtful process and beautiful and nuanced graphics. The proposal focuses equally on ecology and humanity, celebrating the interaction between the two, and the designed forms are as beautifully articulated as they are justified by the research.
PROFESSIONAL AWARDS - COMMUNICATIONS
Merit Awards
Boston Parks & Recreation Department GSI Design and Implementation Guide – Boston, MA
By: Horsley Witten Group - Sandwich, MA
Jury Comments: As a manual for implementation this submission is very user friendly and does an excellent job of communicating to its intended audience. Information is presented via easy to follow icon language and technical data, and it nicely balances skimming and deep dives, providing immense value to the reader.
Bridge X: Reimagining Brooklyn Bridge – New York, NY
By: ScenesLab – Somerville, MA
Jury Comments: The quality of drawings is compelling and challenges how landscape architects showcase what we do--the jury loves that the team is trying new things, exploring, and innovating. In doing this it does an excellent job of communicating intangible components of landscape architecture. Comic book illustrations are especially successful – through thought and speech rather than graphics and labels--stretching landscape architecture in an interesting way.
Greenway Bloom Tracker – Rose Kennedy Greenway, Boston, MA
By: The Greenway Conservancy, WorkReduce, and Daniel Norman, ASLA - Boston, MA
Jury Comments: This ambitious project is beautifully simple, straightforward, and accessible, providing a useful tool for the Greenway that emphasizes planting and getting people to engage with the park. The tool has the ability to entice not only garden clubs, but the average curious person, to think about and appreciate the planted environment.
Seeing the Future: 4 Public Art Installations – East Boston, MA
By: Carolina Aragon - Amherst, MA
Jury Comments: The jury loves the important message demonstrated by this project--public art taking on climate change--and hopes that more work like this is done in Boston. They appreciate that the community engagement process literally built the project, increasing awareness through art and illuminating issues landscape architects struggle to present in our everyday work.
PROFESSIONAL AWARDS - RESEARCH
Honor Award
Where Women Stand
By: the VELA Project – Amherst, MA & Miami, Florida
Jury Comments: The jury highly applauds this submission, for the important data shared in a digestible, compelling, and very informative manner; recognizing that the team has mastered how information should be communicated. The jury was happy to be made aware of what they might not have known, and glad to have the opportunity to have the information shared so clearly.
PROFESSIONAL AWARDS - DESIGN
Merit Awards
Audubon Circle - Boston, MA
By: Crosby | Schlessinger | Smallridge – Boston, MA
Jury Comments: The jury appreciated this collaboration of landscape design and site engineering, resulting in a clean, well-executed project, with nicely integrated stormwater treatment. The project is successful in the management of an incredibly complex circulation challenge, while respecting and reflecting the history of the intersection, forming a strong connection to the river, and providing terraced planting that is simple but elegant and complementary to the overall design.
Clippership Wharf – East Boston, MA
By: Halvorson | Tighe & Bond Studio – Boston, MA
Jury Comments: The jury commends this lovely, innovative project that goes far in working with sea level rise, demonstrating excellent design, including a compelling mix of custom and off the shelf products, reclaimed granite block, and an intriguing mix of planting and stone. They find that the stepped concrete wall could be an excellent opportunity to teach--either in reality or as a diagram in a presentation--the topic of sea level rise.
Over, On, and Through: Besthoff Garden – New Orleans, LA
By: Reed Hilderbrand – Cambridge, MA
Jury Comments: The jury is impressed with this very lovely landscape that is at its heart an amazing asset and investment for the benefit of the public. The jury liked the moments of grounding renderings within the finer context and were intrigued by the role of the landscape architect in siting art pieces in the landscape. The story of water tying the place together in this low lying area is particularly compelling, and the over, under, and through water is a powerful idea.
Florida Ruffin Ridley School – Brookline, MA
By: IBI Placemaking – Boston, MA
Jury Comments: This is a beautiful example of creating a recreational and educational oasis within a dense urban neighborhood. The jury appreciated how the design team transformed an underutilized schoolyard and took full advantage of the many corners of a historic site. The resulting design is successful in both its relationship to new and old architecture as well as the intimate yet highly functional spaces it creates for humans large and small. The design manages to accommodate many programs in an integrated way--including everything from a variety of outdoor classroom spaces to casual weekend play by the community.
King Open Cambridge Street Upper Schools - Cambridge, MA
By: Copley Wolff Design Group, Inc. - Boston, MA
Jury Comments: In this project the jury found the integration and harmony between landscape and architecture to be very thoughtful and well executed, resulting in a space in which users are clearly happy and energized. It is a solid example of landscape architecture--a design that is clean, well executed, and appropriately durable for the setting. The sustainability story is powerful and the number of trees planted impressive.
Southern California’s New Reality - Beverly Hills, CA
By: Reed Hilderbrand – Cambridge, MA
Jury Comments: This is a strong example of how adaptive design can meet contemporary needs and create an attractive and beautiful landscape. The Jury appreciated the use of native and drought tolerant plantings in a place with big challenges and lauded the plan for capturing water in extreme rain events to be used during times of drought.
Suburban Meadow House – Concord, MA
By: Crowley Cottrell, LLC – Boston, MA
Jury Comments: The jury was impressed by this beautiful project, which was lovely in its simplicity and contextualism, extending a wet meadow into a suburban yard and making an important ecological connection, while nicely inserting a domestic landscape within it. It illustrated the key role of the landscape architect in serving as an advocate, showing the client the way to a better, more sustainable future with a low maintenance, ecologically rich space tied to the natural landscape around it.
PROFESSIONAL AWARDS - ANALYSIS & PLANNING
Merit Awards
A Living Shoreline: Charles River - Boston, Massachusetts
By: Perkins & Will – Boston, MA
Jury Comments: This project is a beautiful and ambitious piece of analysis that boldly covers a wide area and provides an elegant solution that stood out from the pack. It is clear that the team spent a lot of time on deep environmental analysis as well as community engagement. While addressing a very specific area of the river, the project can be a prototype, allowing the analysis to benefit all.
Brickline Greenway Framework Plan – St. Louis, MO
By: Stoss Landscape Urbanism – Boston, MA
Jury Comments: The jury found the proposed design renderings to be beautifully executed and the Jury was impressed by the extent of community engagement. This is a community with rich and active grassroots, and the Jury applauds the design team for consulting local advisors. The jury applauded the cohesive outcome given that so many voices were included in the process.
Climate Ready Dorchester – Dorchester, MA
By: SCAPE – New York, NY
Jury Comments: The Jury appreciated how the design team encouraged a diverse community to come together to make something collaboratively, considering best practices for resilient shorelines. An emphasis on programming was clearly incorporated into the community engagement process, and graphics are beautifully rendered.
The Sarasota Bayfront Master Plan – Sarasota, Florida
By: SASAKI and Agency Landscape + Planning – Watertown and North Cambridge, MA
Jury Comments: The jury appreciated the compelling, clear, and lovely drawings, which very successfully expressed the project and its process, particularly in terms of community engagement. In an effort which represents an extraordinary transformation of a challenged community asset, the jury applauded the team's efforts to pay attention to the whole community; in the end tying together a new, diverse demographic.
Honor Awards
Jin River: 2,300 years of Urban Culture - Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China
By: SASAKI – Watertown, MA
Jury Comments: This project clearly communicates the importance of the culture and history of this specific place; not a generic kit of parts, it is focused on planning towards true placemaking. For a non-local project, the Jury felt well informed and grounded in the project site. Issues like accessibility and ecology and why they are important seamlessly informed proposed implementations. We also made note of the attention to existing elements and how they shaped the proposal, including physical structures, existing vegetation and viewsheds.
Virginia Tech Infinite Loop and Green Links – Blacksburg, Virginia
By: SASAKI – Watertown, MA
Jury Comments: Though seemingly straightforward and basically akin to many university planning projects, this project pushes beyond - presenting a detailed, thoughtful, and extremely beneficial process. It provides the client specific, implementable, and conceptually connected projects with an overlay of capital planning decisions. This facilitates what can be a complicated process on most campuses. Not a bunch of band aids, this planning project contains big, compelling ideas about unifying the campus.
Excellence Awards
Strategic Frameworks: 5 Cities in Afghanistan – Afghanistan
By: SASAKI – Watertown, MA
Jury Comments: We had a lot to say about this project, but a few key words and phrases from the jury include Elegant, A joy to Review, Taken Aback, Compelling. Through the quality of graphics and amount of information presented, the jury found clarity and sensitivity in what is ultimately a well-edited and succinct representation of a large amount of information and study. Everpresnt and paramount is attention paid to women, Women as part of the planning team, Women expressly included in the engagement process, Women as noted for their key role in the history of the region, and support of Women in the planned landscape as represented in the toolkit of proposals. Along with the strong diversity of participants, the amount of attention paid toward displaced people made this project especially compelling.
Cambridge Urban Forest Master Plan – Cambridge, MA
By: Reed Hilderbrand – Cambridge, MA
Jury Comments: This plan is an impressive body of work in terms of the depth and focus of scientific analysis that also shows masterful storytelling. It demonstrates a comprehensive and compelling thought process, while providing a readable, accessible handbook for both public authorities and private citizens--a public works manual in the making that would benefit many communities with its policy recommendations. It is the kind of document that changes the way people think about landscape architecture and can make fundamental changes to the city. On a personal level, I see this plan in action as a new member of Cambridge’s public planting committee and the tangible action items are already successful.
JURY SPECIAL RECOGNITIONS
This year BSLA has chosen to recognize the work being done by our profession in more nuanced ways, showcasing the deeper effects our work has in the communities where we work.
For this inaugural year, three projects have demonstrated merit of recognition outside the traditional categorical boundaries we know so well.
Each showcases critical tasks we do in many projects and stand as a testament to best practices and setting new standards moving forward.
“Community Empowerment Through a Lens of Diversity”
Brickline Greenway Framework Plan
In St. Louis, MO
By: Stoss Landscape Urbanism – Boston, MA
Jury Comments: This project demonstrated how landscape architects and teams should listen to, engage with, and co-create alongside the communities where they work. Their efforts are then able to be read and understood in the design and planning recommendations. Engagement is critical and ensuring pluralistic success is something all projects must do moving forward.
“Watershed Change”
Where Women Stand
By: the VELA Project – Amherst, MA & Miami, Florida
Jury Comments: This project pivots to our profession as a whole, bringing key issues of gender equality and inclusivity to the forefront. These measures were worthy of recognition considering the paradigm shift that can occur after dissemination of the work. As BSLA we felt compelled to recognize this work for the years of relative silence on the issue and the work that is being done recently and moving forward.
“Champions for Community Voice”
Kincaide Park
In Quincy, MA
By: Bishop Land Design – Quincy, MA
Jury Comments: This project demonstrates the power and impact public spaces have if you just do it right and keep it simple. This project showcased an excellent and refined set of work that the jury felt was special. Projects like these can serve as guides moving forward to just do it right even with constrained means.
On behalf of BSLA, and the landscape architecture community in Massachusetts and Maine, Congratulations to all of this year’s BSLA Design Awards winners!
Thank you to everyone who submitted. Your participation makes this awards process stronger, and your work advances the profession.
Thank you to the fourteen volunteers — the jury and awards committee co-chairs — who have donated dozens of hours to review this work.
Thank you to collaborator Victor Stanley and to partners Landscape Forms, Little Tikes Commercial, Read Custom Soils, and Unilock for financial support of the Design Awards Celebration event and as partner sponsors throughout the year.
Thank you to our 750 members, students to seasoned professionals, from the Berkshires to Bar Harbor, Portland to Provincetown, Northampton to New Bedford to Boston!
Image: Suburban Meadow House, by Crowley Cottrell.
Winner of a 2021 BSLA Merit Award in Design.
Meet the 2021 BSLA Design Awards Jury
Please join us in welcoming esteemed guest juror, Kona Gray, FASLA.
Kona is principal at EDSA, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and a past president of the board of the Landscape Architecture Foundation. The pandemic's virtual meeting practices have enabled us to fulfill a longtime goal, and that is to bring an internationally recognized landscape architecture voice to this jury -- an esteemed voice from outside of the chapter. We're enormously grateful for Kona's fresh perspective. Kona also brings local roots: he was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts and began studying design at the Boston Architectural College.
We are also pleased to share that Steve Woods and Tina Yun-Ting Tsai, Student ASLA, are joining the 2021 Awards jury. Steve is a senior associate at IBI Placemaking where he has led the creative direction of a wide variety of projects since joining Carol R. Johnson Associates in 2001, as the firm was then known. Tina is a 2020 graduate of Harvard Graduate School of Design, currently a landscape designer at STIMSON, and winner of the 2020 BSLA Award of Excellence for Student work.
Kona, Steve, and Tina join last year's pre-jury. In recent years, jury service was a two year commitment -- one year on the "pre jury," the second year on the Awards jury. An innovation in the 2021 Awards process is condensing jury service to one year. As we navigate this transition, we are honored that last year's pre-jury is continuing their multi-year leadership in this year's Awards process. Thank you to the incredible
Sara Cohen, ASLA | ASK+ and Rhode Island School of Design
Sam Coplan, FASLA | Coplon Associates
Eamonn Hutton, ASLA | Agency Landscape + Planning
Patricia McGirr | University of Massachusetts Amherst
Liza Meyer, ASLA | City of Boston Department of Parks & Recreation
Michael Sardina | Brown + Sardina
William Shivers, Assoc. ASLA | PhD Student, University of Virginia
and
Kate Tooke, ASLA | Sasaki
for your ongoing service to BSLA Design Awards.
Please join us in welcoming the 2021 BSLA Awards jury.
Above: at top, Kona Gray. From left to right, in alphabetical order, top row: Sara Cohen, Sam Coplan, Eamonn Hutton, Patricia McGirr, Liza Meyer. Bottom row: Michael Sardina, William Shivers, Kate Tooke, Tina Yun Ting Tsai, Steve Woods.
