The American Society of Landscape Architects named a group of Illinois graduate students among its award recipients for 2016. Selected from 271 entries representing 71 schools, the ASLA student awards honor the top work of landscape architecture students in the U.S. and around the world.
The Illinois group won the ASLA’s honor award in the student collaboration category. The students’ project, “Seeding Sideyards,” is a proposal to improve physical and mental well-being for residents of the Belmont-Mantua neighborhood near downtown Philadelphia.
The students proposed interventions at both the individual and neighborhood level, envisioning residents at the center of decision-making to direct how resources can be applied to create a more walkable, vibrant community. Rather than developing a central public space, group members proposed transforming underutilized transitional spaces (“sideyards”) throughout the community into integrated, functional places for daily use.
The students approached the project as an illustration of the relationship between everyday contact with nature and human health. Composed of graduate students specializing in architecture and landscape architecture, the team included Carlos Flores, Mamata Guragain, Xiangrong Jiang, Dongying Li, Fatemeh Saedi-Rizi, Rose Schmillen and Tum Suppakittpaisarn.
Winners will receive their awards at the ASLA annual meeting Oct. 24 in New Orleans. The September issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine features the winning projects. More information about the Seeding Sideyards project can be found at https://www.asla.org/2016studentawards/186448.html