ASLA Awards Program Adds Urban Design Category

The Professional and Student Awards bestowed by the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) are prestigious honors in the profession. This year, ASLA has announced the addition of a new award category for both professionals and students –  Urban Design. 

“The world around us is shifting to a more urban population and by the year 2050 it is anticipated that 68 percent of the world’s population will live in cities. Well-crafted and beautifully designed projects have the ability to transform communities, drive economic development, impact large numbers of people, and completely change one’s perception of place,” says Doug Hoerr, FASLA, CEO and principal at Hoerr Schaudt Landscape Architects, who helped lead the effort to create this category as part of the ASLA Honors & Awards Advisory Committee. 

For both the ASLA Professional and ASLA Student awards programs, juries comprised of leading landscape architects select a number of Honor Awards in Urban Design, and may select one Award of Excellence. These awards are an opportunity to highlight the best urban design projects around the globe. 

“Urban Design as a separate award category in the ASLA’s Honors and Awards Program now gives special recognition to the profession’s achievements in those respects,” says Thomas Schurch, ASLA, who helped lead the effort to create this category as co-chair of the ASLA Urban Design Professional Practice Network. “Within the highly competitive and greater design community that includes our peer professions, landscape architecture can now better showcase and promote the vast array of our capabilities in shaping a rapidly changing urban realm.” 

Submissions for the Urban Design category will be accepted once the Call for Entries opens later this fall. 

To read more about the origins of this new category, see the article in LAND.