Two Daniels Faculty Master of Landscape Architecture graduates will be receiving awards from the American Society of Landscape Architecture (ASLA) for their graduate thesis projects. Jordan Duke and Shan Yangwere among the 22 student award winners, selected out of 271 entries from 71 schools around the world.

Jordan Duke will receive an Honour Award in the General Design Category for her thesis project The Digital & The Wild: Mitigating Wildfire Risk Through Landscape Adaptations. Her thesis explored how wildfires could be mitigated through tools that exist within the realm of landscape architecture, and culminated in the development of a strategy for Cleland Conservation Park in South Australia. Her plan combined remote sensors embedded in the landscape with site-specific landscape design strategies that would produce both short- and long-term results for diminishing such disasters in the future. Duke’s thesis advisor was Assistant Professor Liat Margolis. You can also read more about Duke’s project here.

Shan Yang received an honor Award in the Analysis and Planning Category for her thesis project PHYTO-Industry: Reinvigorating the North Vancouver Waterfront Through a Phased Remediation Process.

For her project, Yang presented a remediation strategy that combined existing industrial land with future urban development along a 12-kilometre long industrial belt on the North Shore of Burrard Inlet in Metro Vancouver. Her proposal explored the area’s social and ecological potential, shoreline dynamics, ecology, industrial evolution, and in-situ site remediation strategies to support the development of a multifunctional, ecologically resilient green belt where urban redevelopment to help meet the area’s intense need for housing could take place. Yang’s thesis advisor was Assistant Professor Pete North.

Jury members for the student awards included:

• Laura Solano, ASLA, Chair, Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates Inc., Cambridge, Massachusetts
• Ned Crankshaw, ASLA, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky
• Terrence DeWan, FASLA, Terrence J. DeWan & Associates, Yarmouth, Maine
• Janelle Johnson, ASLA, Hoerr Schaudt Landscape Architects, Chicago
• Jeffrey Lee, FASLA, Lee and Associates Inc., Washington, D.C.
• Elizabeth Miller, FASLA, National Capital Planning Commission, Washington, D.C.
• Forster Ndubisi, FASLA, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas
• Trinity Simons, Mayor’s Institute on City Design, Washington, D.C.
• Barbara Swift, FASLA, Swift & Company Landscape Architects, Seattle

All 2016 ASLA winners will receive their awards at the ASLA Annual Meeting and EXPO in New Orleans on Monday, October 24.

The September issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine (LAM) features the winning projects and is available for free viewing via ASLA’s website.