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Landscape Architecture

Competitions

ASLA 2012 Student Awards

Each year the ASLA recognizes student achievement through its Student Awards program. Student awards are made in the following categories: general design, residential design, analysis and planning, communications, research, community service, and student collaboration.

Entrants must be Student or Student Affiliate members of ASLA, or must be qualified to join ASLA in either of those categories in order to enter. With the exception of the student collaboration category, student entries may be individual or team efforts.

Recipients will be honored at the awards presentation ceremony at the 2012 ASLA Annual Meeting & EXPO, September 28 - October 1, 2012, in Phoenix, AZ. The award winning projects will be featured in a video presentation at the ceremony and on the awards web site following the event. Entrants receiving Honor Awards or Awards of Excellence will receive a complimentary full registration to the 2012 ASLA Annual Meeting and EXPO. Entrants receiving an Award of Excellence (up to seven) will also receive travel and hotel accommodations for the meeting.

Friday, April 27, 2012 was the deadline for entry forms and payment. Submission binders are due by Friday, May 11, 2012. The Student Awards Jury will review all submissions June 15 - 17, 2012. Entrants will be notified of the results shortly following the jury meeting. The awards will be announced to the media following notification of and coordination with the recipients.

For more information about award categories, eligibility, schedule and deadlines, winning strategies, and the entry form, go to the ASLA 2012 Call for Entries web page.

Residential Design Competition/Exhibition: Suburbia Transformed 2.0

To promote a more comprehensive view of residential design and to support the efforts of schools to teach the subject in a more substantive way, the James Rose Center for Landscape Architecture Research and Design has announced its second international design competition/exhibition, co-sponsored by Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, and the New Jersey Chapter of ASLA.

The goal of Suburbia Transformed 2.0: Exploring the Aesthetics of Landscape Experience in the Age of Sustainability is to promote and celebrate residential designs that go beyond "green" by explicitly using sustainable strategies, tactics and technologies to enrich the aesthetic spatial experience of people. This year's competition invites student as well as professional entries, and will include visionary (unbuilt) as well as built works.

Winning entries will be published and displayed at the James Rose Center as well as become part of a traveling exhibition on contemporary residential design. By including student work in this year's version, the Center hopes to provide faculty and students with a framework that could be adapted in residential design studios to explore the subject in a more defined, focused, and comprehensive way.

Entry forms and fees were due February 17, 2012; submissions were due by March 9, 2012.

For more information about the competition, including submission requirements, click here.

The Holland Prize 2012: A Single-Sheet Measured Drawing Competition

The Heritage Documentation Programs (Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record/Historic American Landscapes Survey) has announced the Leicester B. Holland Prize 2012: A Single-Sheet Measured Drawing Competition. This competition, open to both professionals and students, recognizes the best single-sheet measured drawing of an historic building, site, or structure prepared to HABS, HAER, or HALS standards for their collection at the Library of Congress.

By requiring only a single sheet, the competition challenges the delineator to capture the essence of the site through the presentation of key features that reflect its historic and its architectural, landscape architectural, or engineering significance.

The winner of the Leicester B. Holland Prize 2012 will receive a $1,000 cash prize, a certificate of recognition, and publication of the winning drawing in Architectural Record magazine. Merit awards will also be given.

There is no charge to enter the competition, but the Holland Prize Entry Form must be completed by June 1, 2012 and the completed entry postmarked by June 29, 2012.

To download the Holland Prize Entry Form and for additional information on how to participate, including competition rules and recommendations, click here. To follow The Heritage Documentation Programs on Facebook, click here.

2012 SOM Prize and Travel Fellowship

The Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) Foundation offers awards for Architecture, Design (including interior architecture, landscape architecture, environmental graphics, and industrial/product design), and Urban Design.

Two awards are offered for 2012. The SOM Prize is a $50,000 research and travel fellowship which will enable one outstanding student to do in-depth research, collaborate with other designers, and pursue independent study outside the realm of established patterns. A $20,000 travel fellowship will be awarded to the second strongest candidate.

Eligibility: Graduating undergraduate and graduate students of accredited U.S. schools of Architecture, Design and Urban Design are eligible. A multi-disciplinary, independent jury of prominent professionals, together with one SOM Foundation director, selects the winners based on portfolio, research plans and travel itineraries. U.S. citizenship is not required. For the 2012 awards, the applicant's degree must be received between July 1, 2011 and June 30, 2012.

For more information and to download the 2012 Program Guidelines and Intent to Apply form, go to the SOM Foundation awards web page.

The Intent to Apply form needed to be postmarked no later than Monday, April 23, 2012. Submissions must be received no later than 5:00 pm Monday, July 23, 2012. Winners will be notified no later than Friday, August 3, 2012.

2012 Wayne Grace Memorial Student Design Competition

Each year the Landscape Architectural Registration Board Foundation (LARBF), the non-profit charitable foundation of the Council of Landscape Architectural Registration Boards (CLARB), sponsors the Wayne Grace Memorial Student Design Competition, which recognizes outstanding student examples of landscape architectural work that clearly demonstrate how the practice of landscape architecture and licensing affects quality of life.

Submissions will be accepted until June 29, 2012 for this year's competition. One grand prize winner will receive a $1,000 cash prize plus $1,000 credit towards taking the L.A.R.E. or purchasing/renewing a CLARB Council Record.

Details at a glance:

- This competition is open to any student or team of students currently enrolled in an undergraduate or graduate Landscape Architectural Degree Program. If a team of students submits a project, the majority of students on the team must be enrolled in an undergraduate or graduate Landscape Architectural Degree Program.
- Students are encouraged to submit class projects.
- It costs only $25 to submit an entry.
- All entries will be submitted electronically.
- One grand prize winner will receive a $1,000 cash prize + $1,000 credit with CLARB that can be used to a) register for the L.A.R.E. or b) purchase/renew a CLARB Council Record. (If the winning project is submitted by a team of students, each team member will receive an equal share of prizes awarded.)
- Depending on the quality of submissions received, judges may "recognize" additional submissions. If a student's submission is "recognized" but not selected as the grand prize winner, the student will receive $1,000 credit with CLARB that can be used to a) register for the L.A.R.E. or b) purchase/renew a CLARB Council Record. (If a team of students submitted the project that is "recognized," each team member will receive an equal share of the $1,000 credit with CLARB.)
- Submissions will be accepted until June 29, 2012.
- Winners will be announced by August 31, 2012.

The competition honors Wayne Grace, who dedicated himself to improving quality of life through the conscientious practice of landscape architecture, and who worked tirelessly to advance the cause of licensure.

For information about the competition, go to the Council of Landscape Architectural Registration Boards web site.

JSR Foundation 2012 Student Award Competition

The JSR Foundation Student Award recognizes innovative student accomplishments in projects that reflect a positive impact on the Rocky Mountain Region and demonstrate a passion for preserving, improving and enhancing public spaces. The competition is open to all students of an accredited landscape architecture program (BLA or MLA). Only individual submissions will be accepted, and each student is permitted only one entry. Award: $2,000 - $1,000 will be dispensed upon notification of award with the remaining $1,000 to be received upon completion of the final project presentation in Denver, Colorado.

Award judging criteria:

Submission requirements:

Entries must take the form of (5 page maximum) a written and graphic project presentation with a paper size limit of 11" x 17". Entrants must write a half page description (250 words maximum) describing their project and how it meets the competition criteria. Only electronic submittals will be accepted. Mail completed projects in PDF format on a CD-rom and insure that the image quality is high, as this may be used for publication purposes. Also include a low resolution PDF file that is under 5 mb on the same CD-rom disc. Label the CD with your name, school name and project title.

All submissions needed to be received by the JSR Foundation c/o studioINSITE by April 27, 2012.

IFLA Student Design Competition 2011: Urban Boundaries

HSR Hochschule für Technik Rapperswil, University of Applied Sciences is hosting this year's IFLA student competition, which has urban boundaries as its topic.

Background: Dealing with land as a resource in a sustainable way is a globally recognized goal. However, towns and villages continue to expand as long as there is sufficient space. The pressure on the landscape is growing. All too often it is still regarded as potential development land. In conjunction with these trends, the urban boundary is becoming critically important - it is the link to the open landscape that allows humans to meet their fundamental need to experience nature.

Assignment: The population's preoccupation with the value of potential development land plays a crucial role in this expansion. Landscapes have environmental, cultural, economic and other values, all of which influence patterns of development. This competition is based on the thought that the greater the economic value attributed to undeveloped land, the more indiscriminate the inappropriate development will be - and hence the concern about protection.

Entrants should choose one example of an urban/rural transition/boundary in which the values for land are in conflict. They should propose a landscape architectural response to it and show that urban boundaries can be positive transitional elements between the urban landscape and undeveloped land, if they are planned and designed properly.

Entrants are invited to develop conceptual proposals and plans for the use and design of urban boundaries using a specific example of their choice.

Eligibility: The competition is open to all students of Landscape Architecture. Both individual and group submissions will be accepted-only one entry per student or group. Broad interdisciplinary submissions are welcome; however, the project must be about landscape architecture.The number of members in each participating group may not exceed five (5).

Awards: 1st place-$3,500; 2nd place-$2,500; 3rd place-$1,000. In addition, the 1st place winner(s) will receive international recognition through announcements and IFLA publicity and assistance for travel to the IFLA Congress.

March 26, 2011 was the deadline for entries.

For addition information, go to the IFLA 2011 Student Design Competition web site.

The Holchim Awards for Sustainable Construction

The Holchim Awards start with a series of regional competitions in each of the five world regions: Europe, North America, Latin America, Africa Middle East and Asia Pacific. Independent juries supported by the Holchim Foundation's partner universities evaluate submissions on the basis of five "target issues" for sustainable construction: progress, people, planet, prosperity, and proficiency. There is a separate category for students with its own prizes of $25,000, $15,000, or $10,000 at the regional level.

Eligible projects and concepts include: buildings and civil engineering works; landscape, urban design and infrastructure; and materials, products and construction technologies.

The deadline for submissions was March 23, 2011. For more information, click here.

Design for Post-Earthquake Resilience of Cities: Multidisciplinary Design Ideas Competition

Competition flier

The New Zealand Society for Earthquake Engineering is sponsoring a competition that seeks proposals to increase the resiliency of cities and communities affected by earthquakes and tsunamis, with a focus on aiding recovery and social regeneration to affected areas.

Entrants are encouraged to choose a city or community familiar to them, anywhere on the Pacific Rim, and to design a proposal that utilizes preplanning and/or post-disaster response and reconstruction methodologies to reduce the long term impact of an earthquake event on the built environment and social fabric. Entries will respond to the specific earthquake hazards and vulnerabilities that the chosen area faces.

The competition is open to all design disciplines, including architecture, landscape architecture, and urban planning; and all associated engineering and sociological disciplines. Multidisciplinary entries are welcome, and international entries are encouraged.

First prize is NZ$2000. Second prize is NZ$750. Highly commended entries will be awarded NZ$100.

March 18, 2011 was the deadline to register for the competition. Entries were due by April 8, 2011.

Asst. Professor Cesar Torres-Bustamante, Lecturer Louise Schiller, and MCRP student Schani Siong teamed up to win first place in this competition. Their proposal, "City Map," used Acapulco, Mexico as a site to test a low-budget and easy implementation strategy that focused on using existing transport infrastructure to assign new uses and programs after an earthquake.

For more information, click here.

2011 Bank of America Low-Income Housing Challenge

Twelve Cal Poly undergraduate and graduate students from the Orfalea College of Business and the College of Architecture & Environmental Design – including Architecture, Landscape Architecture, City & Regional Planning and Construction Management – competed in the 2011 Bank of America Low-Income Housing Challenge.

The Cal Poly team placed first again this year, beating UC Berkeley and UC Irvine. Team members included LA majors Yesenia Fernandez and Andrew Nowak. In 2009, the Cal Poly team also placed first. In 2010, the team placed second. To view this year's winning project, click here.

This was a unique learning opportunity to participate in an interdisciplinary design-build team to work collaboratively to design and finance an affordable housing project.

The Bank of America Community Development Banking Group created the Low-Income Housing Challenge in 1992. Since then, the bank has sponsored this regional competition that challenges undergraduate and graduate student teams to offer their best ideas and strategies for the development of affordable housing. The task requires a great deal of thought and vision as the team develops concepts, designs, community support, and financing for housing projects that are affordable for low-income households. Participation in this competition gives students an opportunity to apply knowledge gained in the classroom to critically important human needs.

Proposals were judged by local professionals from a variety of fields within the housing industry. Jurors included project managers representing nonprofit developers, representatives from advocacy and trade organizations, tax credit investors, lenders, and architects.

Competition preparation began in January and ended in mid-May.