Through two annual awards, the Landscape Architecture Foundation (LAF) recognizes those individuals and firms/organizations that have made a significant and sustained contribution to the LAF mission of supporting the preservation, improvement and enhancement of the environment.
Launched in 2016 for LAF’s 50th anniversary, these awards are the Foundation's highest honors. Recipients are announced each year in February and honored at an LAF Awards Dinner in the spring. Nominations and selections are made by the LAF Board of Directors and Board Emeritus Council.
Process
Both awards are many annually, with the winners honored at the LAF Awards Dinner in the spring. Nominations are made by the LAF Board Emeritus Council. Final selections are made by the Board Emeritus Council and LAF Executive Committee.
2019 Award Committee Members:
- Len Hopper, FASLA, Weintraub Diaz Landscape Architecture, Committee Chair
- Chip Crawford, FASLA, BATESFORUM
- Kathleen Garcia, FASLA, City of Del Mar
- Richard Hawks, FASLA, SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry
- Frederick Steiner, FASLA, University of Pennsylvania
For more information, contact Rory Doehring at rdoehring [at] lafoundation.org">rdoehring [at] lafoundation.org or 202-331-7070 x17.
LAF Medal
This award is conveyed to a landscape architect for distinguished work over a career in applying the principles of sustainability to landscapes. The award recognizes lifetime achievements in design, research, innovation, advocacy, and/or policy with a focus on sustainability. Honorees come from private practice, academia, nonprofit and public sectors, exemplify the values of LAF, and have made a significant contribution to the advancement of the landscape architecture discipline.
Carol Franklin Founding Principal, Andropogon Associates, Ltd, Philadelphia, PA Carol
Franklin2018 LAF Medal Recipient
Founding Principal
Andropogon Associates, Ltd
Philadelphia, PA“Carol Franklin exemplifies career-long passion and leadership in promoting ecological awareness and sustainability. In addition to her award-winning work as a founding member of Andropogon, she taught at PennDesign for over 30 years, seeding the next generation with those values.”
— Awards Committee Chair Dennis Carmichael, FASLA
Carol Franklin, FASLA, PLA is a pioneering landscape architect, who has been at the forefront of ecological and sustainable landscape design since 1975. A founding principal of Andropogon Associates, Ltd., she is a nationally recognized expert in ecological design. Carol’s work exemplifies her lifelong interest in restoring both natural and cultural landscapes and in re-establishing the essential connection between the two.
For more than three decades, she has worked to develop sustainable institutions, parks, and communities, generating solutions that integrate historical, cultural, economic, and environmental concerns. Her notable works include the Stapleton Airport Redevelopment Master Plan in Denver, restoration plans for Central Park’s North Meadow and Woods in New York City, the landscape master plan for the Fallingwater National Historic Landmark in Pennsylvania, the master plan for Louisville’s Olmsted Parks and Pathways in Kentucky, and the master plan and restorations at the University of Pennsylvania’s Morris Arboretum.
Since the beginning of her career, Carol has dedicated significant time and energy to education and public service. From 1972 to 2002, Carol was an adjunct professor in the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning. From 2002 to 2005, she taught cultural landscapes in the Department of Historic Preservation and served as a guest studio master in the Department of Landscape Architecture. She has served on the boards of various local and nonprofit organizations dedicated to conservation.
Carol has written and lectured widely on ecological design and planning. Her essays have been featured in Nature and Cities: The Ecological Imperative in Urban Design and Planning (Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2016), Principles of Ecological Landscape Design, (Island Press, 2013), and Ecological Design and Planning (John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 1997).
Cornelia Hahn Oberlander Vancouver, BC Cornelia
Hahn Oberlander2017 LAF Medal Recipient
Vancouver, BC“Cornelia Hahn Oberlander once said, ‘I dream of green cities and green buildings where rural and urban activities live in harmony.’ With a career spanning a stunning seventy years, she has created just that.”
— Awards Committee Chair Dennis Carmichael, FASLA
A native of Germany, Cornelia Hahn Oberlander, O.C., O.B.C., FCSLA, FASLA, BCSLA fled with her family from the terror of the Nazi regime in 1939 and settled in the United States, where she attended Smith College. She was a pioneer in the profession of landscape architecture as one of the first female students at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, graduating in 1947. Her early career included collaborations with James Rose and Dan Kiley in the emerging field of modernism in landscape architecture. In 1953, she and her husband, urban planner H. Peter Oberlander, moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, where she set up her own practice.
Her work included a variety of projects, and was characterized by a concern for social and environmental responsibility. Her Children’s Creative Center at Expo 67 led to the creation of national guidelines for children’s playgrounds. Among her most noteworthy projects was Robson Square, a collaboration with architect Arthur Erickson, in which it can be said, she realized her dream of green cities and green buildings. The sprawling cultural and civic center in downtown Vancouver is a perfect fusion of landscape and architecture in which the roofs of buildings become the floors of the city. One of the first and grandest green roof projects, it transformed the city and opened up a new way of seeing urban landscapes. The design also proved that barrier- free design could be beautiful and not merely functional, providing a model for universal access.
Cornelia has earned national and international acclaim for her work, including the Governor General’s Medal in Landscape Architecture from the Canadian Society of Landscape Architects, the ASLA Medal from the American Society of Landscape Architects, the Margolese National Design for Living Prize from the University of British Columbia, the Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe Award from the International Federation of Landscape Architects, appointment as an Officer of the Order of Canada, and honorary degrees from a number of Canadian and U.S. universities.
Grant Jones Cofounder, Jones & Jones, Seattle, WA Grant
Jones2016 LAF Medal Recipient
Cofounder
Jones & Jones
Seattle, WA“Grant Jones has a depth and breadth of work focusing on natural systems. He was a real innovator of the 1980s and 1990s in many areas, from how site analysis informs planning to completely reinventing what it means to be a zoo. His work, writings, poetry, and advocacy created the transformative change LAF seeks to make in the profession.”
— Awards Committee Chair Dennis Carmichael, FASLA
Grant Jones — landscape architect, poet, and co-founder of Jones & Jones — has practiced and preached ecological design for more than 30 years. He and his Jones & Jones colleagues’ pioneering methodologies in landscape aesthetics, river planning, habitat design, scenic highway design and conservation planning, including the development of new methodologies in GIS modeling, have set the standard for environmentally responsive design and have brought the firm a stream of awards.
Over the years Grant has brought his passion, expertise, and eloquence to many signature Jones & Jones projects. These include the Paris Pike Historic Highway in Kentucky, the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum in Tuscon, Disney’s Animal Kingdom in Orlando, the Mountains-to-Sound Greenway in Washington, the Commons Park in Denver and America’s first wildlife highway, U.S. Highway 93 through the Flathead Reservation in western Montana. Grant’s landscape poetry is recognized as a fundamental to his design approach and integral to his research and scholarship in ecological design and landscape conservation planning.
Grant received his Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Washington, followed by a post-graduate stint as a poet in Theodore Roethke’s verse writing class during Roethke’s tenure as Poet in Residence at the University of Washington. He received his MLA from Harvard’s School of Design, where he won the Frederick Sheldon Traveling Fellowship to research environmental design adaptations in South America and Western Europe.
Grant is an Affiliate Professor at the University of Washington. From 1999-2007, he served on the Landscape Architecture Foundation Board of Directors, serving as Vice President of Education . He has held academic positions at the University of California, Berkeley, Harvard, University of Oregon, the University of Virginia, Texas A&M, and Ohio State and has lectured at thirty departments of landscape architecture.
LAF Founders’ Award
This award is conveyed to a firm, agency, or organization that demonstrates a significant commitment to preserving, creating, or enhancing landscapes over a sustained period of time. The award is not limited to groups within the landscape architecture discipline.
Trust for Public Land San Francisco, CA Trust for
Public Land2018 LAF Founders' Award Recipient
San Francisco, CAFor over 45 years, the Trust for Public Land has worked to protect land for people, emphasizing the value of designed and natural spaces for our increasingly urban population. TPL’s mission and values align closely with those of landscape architects, and their efforts have had positive impacts for tens of millions of Americans.
— Awards Committee Chair Dennis Carmichael, FASLA
Since its founding in 1972, The Trust for Public Land (TPL) has focused on conserving land for human use and public benefits. Distinct from other environmental organizations and land trusts, a founding goal of TPL was to extend the conservation movement to urban areas, where 80% of Americans live. Over the years, the organization has been involved with more than 5,400 park and conservation projects in 47 states, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Today, TPL helps communities raise funds, conduct research and planning, acquire and protect land, and design and renovate parks, playgrounds, trails, and gardens. The organization has become an indispensable advocate for public lands and the legal protections and funding structures that support them.
Through its work, TPL has helped to transform the conversation about urban parks and open space so that they are seen not just as an amenity but as a community investment. TPL’s Center for City Park Excellence, founded in 2001, conducts research on what makes urban parks successful and how these parks provide economic, environmental, and social value. The center gathers and maintains the most extensive data set on city parks and park systems in the U.S., publishing numerous articles and reports, including the ParkScore annual ranking of the 100 largest urban park systems.
Newer strategies and initiatives like TPL’s Climate-Smart Cities, 10-Minute Walk campaign, and Our Public Lands advocacy efforts keep The Trust for Public Land at the forefront of the urban parks and conservation movement. The Trust for Public Land’s values align closely with those of LAF and landscape architects, who are trained to design for natural processes, natural resources, and people.
National Park Service Washington, DC National
Park Service2017 LAF Founders' Award Recipient
Washington, DC“In no small way are landscape architects and their organizations, including the Landscape Architecture Foundation, indebted to the National Park Service for its leadership, ethics, and works of landscape architecture. It is only fitting for LAF to honor the National Park Service with its highest honor, the 2017 LAF Founders’ Award.”
— Awards Committee Chair Dennis Carmichael, FASLA
The U.S. National Park Service had its origins in 1872 when President Ulysses S. Grant signed into legislation a bill that established Yellowstone National Park as the first such park in the world to be preserved for the recreation, inspiration, and education of future generations. The system grew to 14 National Parks and 21 National Monuments until 1916 when President Woodrow Wilson signed a bill that established the National Park Service (NPS) as the steward of this vast array of unique natural and cultural resources. The mission and philosophy of the NPS was codified at that time, and landscape architects helped shape the agenda to preserve, protect, and enhance these parks in perpetuity.
In 2016, the NPS had its centennial celebration, and over 300 million people visited the more than 400 NPS sites across America. Since the beginning, landscape architects have played an essential role within the NPS to preserve our iconic landscapes by leading design, conservation, and recreation projects throughout the park system. In 1993, the NPS published Guiding Principles of Sustainable Design, illuminating the core values of sustainable design in a way that was both understandable and refreshing. This tome became a benchmark for a renewed focus upon ecological effectiveness and conservation of resources and materials for design professionals.
American Society of Landscape Architects Washington, DC American Society of
Landscape Architects2016 LAF Founders' Award
Washington, DC“Founded in 1899, the American Society of Landscape Architects is the first organization in the world to promote the practice and ethics of landscape architecture as a profession. ASLA serves as the premier advocacy and educational forum for landscape architects, with its core vision to lead design and stewardship of land and communities.”
— Awards Committee Chair Dennis Carmichael, FASLA
The American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) is the national professional association for landscape architects, representing more than 15,000 members in 49 professional chapters and 72 student chapters. The Society’s mission is to advance landscape architecture through advocacy, communication, education, and fellowship.
Through its programs, ASLA:
- Raises the visibility of the landscape architecture profession through activities like World Landscape Architecture Month
- Conducts legislative and regulatory outreach to educate policymakers
- Supports licensure of the practice of landscape architecture in the U.S.
- Sponsors continuing education
- Hosts the world’s largest gathering of landscape architects at its Annual Meeting and EXPO
- Enable networking, exchanges on professional opportunities, and sharing of best practices and research
- Serves as an authoritative resource for information and best practices in sustainable landscape design