LAF at the 2026 ASLA Conference on Landscape Architecture

If you'll be in Los Angeles for the 2026 American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) Conference on Landscape Architecture, please join us to celebrate, connect, and share. Stop by our EXPO booth to learn about LAF programs and initiatives and how you can get involved. We hope to see you!

LAF's 41st Annual Benefit*
Date/Time: Wed, September 16 8-10pm
Location: The Belasco
(*Registration Required)
Catch up with friends from practice, academia, and industry over drinks and food in this stunning venue. Tickets to this reception-style event include fine food and an open bar with all proceeds supporting LAF and its key programs and initiatives.

LAF's Booth in the ASLA EXPO Hall (#1749)
Date/Time: Wed, Sep 16, 9:30am-3:30pm; Thu, Sep 17, 9:30am-5pm]
Location: Los Angeles Convention Center, South Level 1 Halls G/H/J
Stop by our booth to learn about LAF programs and funding opportunities, including LAF's Ignite program for BIPOC landscape architecture students and how you can get involved as an internship provider or mentor.

Landscape Architecture Research Exchange LIVE
Date/Time: Thurs, Sept 17, 2pm-3pm PT 
Location: Los Angeles Convention Center, ASLA Pavilion (EXPO) 
Los Angeles Convention Center, ASLA Pavilion (EXPO)
Join landscape architecture practitioners and faculty for an interactive networking session focused on building research collaborations. Participants will identify shared research interests, exchange ideas, discuss opportunities and challenges, and make connections that bridge research and practice. Through a series of facilitated small-group discussions, attendees from academia and practice will connect with others who share complementary interests and explore opportunities for future collaboration. We hope that participants will walk away with contact info for potential research partners and a head full of ideas on collaborative research projects! Hosted by the Landscape Architecture Foundation (LAF) and the ASLA Education & Practice Working Group.

educational sessions

All ASLA Conference Education Sessions, Deep Dive, and Practice Basecamp sessions take place in the Los Angeles Convention Center.

Featuring LAF staff...

FRI-A03: Unlocking the Economic Value of Landscape Architecture: A Cross-sector Research Agenda 
Date/Time: Fri, Sept 18, 9am-10:15pm PT 
Location: Center Stage-Room 411 Theatre 
Speakers: Megan Barnes (LAF staff), Torey Carter-Conneen, Jennifer Egan 
How can landscape architects better demonstrate economic return? To address this challenge, ASLA, the Landscape Architecture Foundation, and the University of Maryland have identified new research and collaboration pathways for practitioners, academics, and allies. Learn how to contribute to an emerging community-wide effort. 

Featuring past LAF program participants discussing their LAF-supported work or a continuation of it...

WED-A03: Grounding the Grid: Designing Energy Landscapes as Civic Infrastructure 
Date/Time: Wed, Sept 16, 8:30am-9:45am PT 
Location: Room 502A 
LAF Program Alum and LAF Board of Directors Members Speaking: Edmundo R. Colon-Izquierdo (2020-21 LAF Fellow), Richard Roark (LAF Board of Directors), and Roberto J. Rovira (LAF Past President) 
As an island confronting extreme energy vulnerability, Puerto Rico offers a compelling model for climate-responsive design. This session explores how design studios and professional practice can transform fragile, centralized energy systems into regenerative civic infrastructure, advancing renewable transition, resilience, and environmental justice through integrated design process and professional practice. As an island confronting extreme energy vulnerability, Puerto Rico offers a compelling model for climate-responsive design. This session explores how design studios and professional practice can transform fragile, centralized energy systems into regenerative civic infrastructure, advancing renewable transition, resilience, and environmental justice through integrated design process and professional practice. As an island confronting extreme energy vulnerability, Puerto Rico offers a compelling model for climate-responsive design. This session explores how design studios and professional practice can transform fragile, centralized energy systems into regenerative civic infrastructure, advancing renewable transition, resilience, and environmental justice through integrated design process and professional practice. As an island confronting extreme energy vulnerability, Puerto Rico offers a compelling model for climate-responsive design. This session explores how design studios and professional practice can transform fragile, centralized energy systems into regenerative civic infrastructure, advancing renewable transition, resilience, and environmental justice through integrated design process and professional practice. 

WED-B03: Let’s Talk About Sequestration 
Date/Time: Wed, Sept 16, 10:45am-12:00pm PT 
Location: Room 502B  
LAF Program Alum Speaking: Christopher R. Hardy (2022-23 LAF Fellow)  
It’s time we had an uncomfortable conversation about carbon sequestration. Carbon sequestration is complex, incremental, and subject to reversal. We need to be able to design and speak to its power with authenticity and accuracy, and design to maximize its potential, if we hope to achieve our climate action goals. 

WED-C04: Tracking Whole Life Carbon for LA 2040 
Date/Time: Wed, Sept 16, 1:15pm-2:30pm PT 
Location: Room 502A 
LAF Program Alum Speaking: Meg Calkins (2023-24 LAF Fellow)  
Whole life carbon provides the context for tracking the embodied, operational, sequestered, and stored carbon of a site project. Presenters will introduce a new carbon assessment methodology developed by the ASLA Climate and Biodiversity Action Committee and explore its connections to larger industry initiatives. 

THUR-C10: Wood Is Good!?* Using Low Carbon, Ethical Wood Materials in Site Construction 
Date/Time: Thurs, Sept 17, 2:15pm-3:30pm PT 
Location: Room 403B 
LAF Program Alum Speaking: Meg Calkins (2023-24 LAF Fellow)  
Wood products for sites offer positive benefits including lower embodied carbon, renewability, carbon storage, and biophilic attributes. But there are environmental and even human rights impacts from some wood products. This session will discuss carbon neutrality of wood products, procurement and design with reclaimed wood, and sustainable forestry considerations. 

THUR-A05: Staging Reciprocity: Designing with Communities for Justice and Resilience 
Date/Time: Thurs, Sept 17, 8:30am-9:45am PT 
Location: Room 151 
LAF Program Alum Speaking: Jeff Hou (2019-20 LAF Fellow)  
This session moves beyond transactional community engagement by introducing “thick reciprocity”—a framework for shared authorship and trust. Through case studies, learn to design with communities, not for them. Gain strategies for equitable, resilient, and meaningful projects that foster long-term stewardship and endure beyond project completion. 

FRI-D04: Publics, Projects, Power: Engagement Techniques for Real-world Constraints 
Date/Time: Fri, Sept 18, 3:00pm-4:15pm PT 
Location: Room 151 
LAF Program Alums Speaking: Jeff Hou (2019-20 LAF Fellow) and Claire Latané (2017-2018 LAF Fellow) 
Community engagement often stalls between input and implementation. This session offers a practical framework to diagnose where projects break down and apply targeted methods that move from voice to evidence, decision, and stewardship. Leave with tools you can use immediately to work with your community. 

THUR-A07: Perception of Place: Integrating Multisensory Experiences into Design 
Date/Time: Thurs, Sept 17, 8:30am-9:45am PT 
Location: Room 403B 
LAF Program Alum Speaking: Alexa Vaughn (2020-21 LAF Fellow)  
Multisensory design can shape how people perceive and move through public landscapes. Yet many projects overlook the full range of sensory experience, limiting access and experience. This session explores how multisensory, narrative-based approaches—drawn from research, engagement, fabrication, and built work—can strengthen equity, accessibility, and user experience. 

THUR-C08: Climate Resilient Rural Self-sufficiency: Lessons from California's Only Black Freedom Colony 
Date/Time: Thurs, Sept 17, 2:15pm-3:30pm PT 
Location: Room 408B 
LAF Program Alum Speaking: Alison Hirsch (2020-21 LAF Fellow)  
Founded in 1908 as California’s first Black town, Allensworth now confronts severe environmental and climate injustice. Co-led with the Allensworth Progressive Association, this session examines equity-driven rural planning/design centered on community governance, cultural history, water justice, regenerative agriculture, infrastructural security. Learn how landscape architects can partner to repair systemic harm. 

FRI-A01: Designing Food as Landscape Infrastructure 
Date/Time: Fri, Sept 18, 9:00am-10:15am PT 
Location: Room 515A 
LAF Program Alum Speaking: Forbes Lipschitz (2024-25 LAF Fellow)  
This session reframes food systems as essential landscape infrastructure. Through global examples and practice-based perspectives, panelists examine how agriculture and stewardship support biodiversity, soil health, and territorial planning. The discussion positions productive landscapes as design drivers, offering frameworks to integrate food systems into master planning and public realm strategies. 

FRI-B03: Mapping Heat, Health & Equity: Landscape Tools for Climate Resilience 
Date/Time: Fri, Sept 18, 10:45am-12pm PT  
Location: Room 502A  
LAF Program Alum Speaking: Kimberly Garza (2023-24 LAF Fellow)  
A climate-resilient future depends on how we map, design, and advocate. This panel introduces new data tools and storytelling strategies to help landscape architects address extreme heat, health inequities, and funding barriers. Time to turn metrics into momentum. 

FRI-D01: Designing with Care: Collaboration and Stewardship for Biodiverse Landscapes 
Date/Time: Fri, Sept 18, 3:00pm-4:15pm PT  
Location: Room 515A  
LAF Program Alums Speaking: Brenna Castro and A. Haven Kiers (2024-25 LAF Deb Mitchell Research Grant recipients)  
Ecologically vibrant landscapes do not emerge from design alone; they are shaped over time through care, adaptation, and the shared decisions of the people who steward them. This session will explore the maintenance challenges preventing widespread adoption of high-biodiversity landscapes, and present innovative models for stewardship, collaboration, and on-the-ground maintenance, aligned with the SITES V2 framework.