The honor for Grupo de Diseño Urbano reflects founder Mario Schjetnan’s focus on immigrant issues and his country’s "mosaic of cultures."

By Timothy A. Schuler

In 1999, 20 years after establishing the design practice Grupo de Diseño Urbano in Mexico City, Mario Schjetnan, FASLA, then 55, accepted a job as the director of the University of Arizona’s landscape architecture program. It was his second time living in the United States (he had earned his graduate degree in landscape architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1970), but it was his first encounter with Mexican immigrant communities. Continue reading "For All of Latin America": Mexican Firm Celebrates Its Oberlander Prize →

The last link in a Texas trail connects flood control with habitat and cultural history.

By Jennifer Reut

It’s a real moment for the design team when a project like the Brushy Creek Regional Trail hits a milestone. Home to several endangered species including invertebrates, the trail is a legacy project for Austin-based RVi Planning + Landscape Architecture’s Tim Bargainer, ASLA, who was around 25 years ago when the project was born from a red Sharpie line on a map. Continue reading How a Small Texas Trail Became a Green Infrastructure Engine →

Sun Valley was the inspiration in BYLA’s plan to bring the area’s mountain ecology to Ketchum’s downtown.

By Timothy A. Schuler

In the 1930s, a publicist working for a resort developer nicknamed Idaho’s Wood River basin "Sun Valley" and coined the tagline "Winter sports under a summer sun." At 5,750 feet above sea level, the alpine valley is surrounded by five distinct mountain ranges and receives about 250 days of sunshine a year. That sunlight makes for a pleasant day of downhill skiing, but in the summer, when the sun doesn’t set until well after 9:00 p.m., it sends visitors looking for a spot of shade. Continue reading An Idaho Courtyard Where Hotel Guests (and Sheep) Can Mingle →

A humble attitude brought the Charlotte firm work for three decades. Pulling out of the recession called for bolder moves.

By Bradford McKee

In 2014, six years after the Great Recession showed up at LandDesign’s doorsteps, Rhett Crocker, ASLA, was looking to lead the firm out of survival mode. Crocker had just become the firm’s fifth president. He wanted to attract new kinds of clients—national ones with big names—but few seemed to recognize the firm or its work. Even a longtime client, who assumed the firm did work only in Charlotte, North Carolina, where the firm is based, expressed surprise at seeing a major project LandDesign had done "in China or the Caribbean or someplace," Crocker recalls. "He had no idea of the depth of what we do.”

Continue reading Behind LandDesign’s Transformation Into a Powerhouse Firm →

Eight Gulf Coast practitioners reflect on landscape architecture’s evolution and the success of community-based projects.

On August 29, 2005, the tropical cyclone battered coastal areas throughout Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, claiming more than 1,300 lives and causing an estimated 125ドル billion in damage, including widespread catastrophic flooding. The storm also forced a national focus on climate change, coastal resilience, and racial and socioeconomic inequities. Landscape architects found themselves at the center of this conversation. In August, two weeks before the 20th anniversary of Katrina, eight designers based in the Gulf Coast region reflected on the storm and its impact on the profession. Continue reading “The Profession Burst”: Designers on Katrina’s Impact 20 Years Later →

A Black-owned design firm has 30 years of mission-driven work and a “portfolio that a lot of people don’t have.”

By Sala Elise Patterson

Photography by Sahar Coston-Hardy, Affiliate ASLA.

Elizabeth Kennedy, FASLA, knows intimately how much landscape architecture has matured over the past few decades. She is the founder of Elizabeth Kennedy Landscape Architect, PLLC (EKLA), the longest-surviving landscape architecture firm headed by a Black woman in America. Based in Brooklyn’s Navy Yard, the firm specializes in historic landscapes, cultural heritage sites, and green infrastructure considered through a social justice lens. Continue reading Elizabeth Kennedy’s Quiet Revolution →

James Andrew Billingsley, a winner of the 2025 Bradford Williams Medal, pulls no punches with his take on some of New York’s swankiest new parks.

By Joe Adler

James Andrew Billingsley wants to make something abundantly clear: He likes Little Island, the 2.4-acre constructed park with walking paths and dramatic plantings that floats above the Hudson River on New York City’s West Side. "I think the planting is amazing," says the writer and computational designer. Continue reading A Prize-winning Essay Questions N.Y. Park Designs. Design Criticism Is Better for It. →