The American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) is a professional association representing landscape architects. Each year, the Maryland and Potomac Chapters honor a select group of landscape architects with awards that recognize achievement in land analysis, planning, design, management, preservation, and rehabilitation.
Honor Awards recognize the highest level of achievement, Merit Awards recognize superior professional accomplishments, and the prestigious Traveling Award is given to a single project that uniquely reflects and solves the most current issues in landscape architecture through innovative design excellence.
Landscape architects design the built natural environment of neighborhoods, towns, cities, office plazas, public squares and thoroughfares, retail centers, and private residences. The work of landscape architects surrounds us, adding beauty and utility to the landscapes of our lives. In ChesapeakeHome’s coverage of the Maryland and Potomac Chapters’ ASLA awards, we highlight the residential winners and offer a glimpse at the beautiful commercial and public award-winning designs. For more information about ASLA and the Maryland and Potomac Chapters, visit asla.org or mdasla.org. To learn more about this year’s winning projects, read on.
Honor Award
Tidewater Farm
Graham Landscape Architecture
(grahamlandarch.com or 410-269-5886)
The goals for the landscape plan of Tidewater Farm were simple: enhance the habitat for migratory and ground-nesting wildlife. Although simply stated, the implementation required a comprehensive land management plan that would consider 400 acres of agriculture, forests, ponds, wetlands, and waterfront. Graham Landscape Architecture suggested that the landowners “leap the garden fence” and consider best land management practices for the greater landscape. The completed project preserves the estate’s 19th-century bustling wharf business heritage, uncovering and reinterpreting a historical road to the wharf and repositioning and reusing 19th-century outbuildings. A new circular drive in front of the house provides a graceful entrance focused on the front door but also casually connects the gardens with the wider landscape.
Merit Award
The Cliff
Arentz Landscape Architects
(arentzdc.com or 540-341-4330)
The Cliff project received honors for the design and construction observation of an 88-acre property that sits 425 feet above the Shenandoah River and offers magnificent views to the Blue Ridge Mountains and the river corridor. Care was taken to design a concept that would fulfill the clients’ goals to marry the colonial revival style of the home with a modernist aesthetic and feng shui principles. Specific design strategies included creating a parking courtyard for 4 to 8 cars that did not look like a parking lot; making logical sense of the flow to the front door; terracing the riverside of the house to create mountain views and space for entertaining; installing a fountain on axis with the dining room and a sunken lawn stretched to the cliff’s edge; and establishing a cliff walk planted with weeping love grass and wildflowers, which leads to a circular garden then winds through a perennial border as it makes its way to an oval lawn and back to the dining terrace.
Merit Award
Private Residence
The Fitch Studio
(thefitchstudio.com or 202-588-0148)
This residential garden is based on the Fitch Studio’s guiding principle that there is only one project, combining both architecture and landscape architecture. To achieve a design that closely links indoor and outdoor spaces, the approach was to extend the gestures of the architecture, in both line and material, into the landscape. The project achieves the clients’ goals by creating a smooth transition between indoor and outdoor spaces; expressing the garden through clean, simple, and elegant design; incorporating a 50-foot lap pool; enhancing views to the surrounding woodland; and developing a lighting scheme that gives the garden a strong nighttime presence.
Honor Award & Traveling Award
Powhatan Springs Park in Arlington, Virginia
OCULUS (oculus-dc.com or 202-588-5454)
This 51/2-acre public park is designed to include a permanent concrete skate park, an athletic field, restrooms, administration buildings, an observation deck, and a children’s interactive rain garden. The design team included an architect, an artist, a skate park designer, and engineers. In lieu of using a storm sewer system, water is collected and managed on-site, and all of the water terminates at the rain garden, where wetland plantings and sand filter the water before it drains to an underground storage tank. In the rain garden, children can use a hand pump to draw the stored water, which then spills out into concrete half-pipes, down through the woods to the existing on-site stream.
Merit Award
San Jacinto Battleground
EDAW, Inc
(edaw.com or 703-836-1414)
The extensive site plan for the San Jacinto Battleground required that EDAW landscape architects consider re-vegetation projects that would eradicate invasive plants and re-establish native habitats through grading, drainage, and planting. Additionally, the plan called for restoring the “Texan Camp” area of the battlefield. Each memorial and gravestone that had been established over many eras of commemoration needed to be relocated before restoring the Camp.
Merit Award
Cady’s Alley
The Fitch Studio
(thefitchstudio.com or 202-588-0148)
The Cady’s Alley development in Washington, DC is a pedestrian/service alley that provides front door access to shops, apartments, and restaurants. While many architects took part in developing a variety of mixed-use projects, the Fitch Studio was the only design firm that worked on the entire site comprehensively. The land plan the firm developed provides unity by creating new pedestrian access to the alley, designing a courtyard/café space, and restoring the alley’s 18th-century heritage through use of materials that evoke its historical nature. Because alleys are smaller than streets and drain in the center not on the sides, a central drainage system dramatizes the passage of water down the centerline by using eroded, water-washed pebbles. The sides of the alley are paved in brick turned on-edge to mimic a sidewalk, and the center is paved in granite blocks recycled from other alleys to create a “carriageway” and recall an 18th-century aesthetic.
Honor Award
Anacostia Waterfront Transportation Architecture Design Standards Manual
Michael Baker Corp
(mbakercorp.com or 703-960-8800)
District Department of Transportation LOW IMPACT Development Center The Anacostia Waterfront Transportation Architecture Design Standards Manual was designed to develop a plan for a sustainable urban transportation system by addressing mobility, environmental stewardship, and community planning. The plan offers tools for integrating the Anacostia waterfront with other parts of the District through various modes of transportation including mass transit, light rail, automobiles, and bicycle and pedestrian trails. The plan also looks at community design with a goal to incorporate public artwork and open spaces while emphasizing the natural beauty of the riverfront, the history of the people, and the proximity to the nation’s monuments. (The photo shown here is an example of what a portion of the finished project will look like.)
Merit Award
War Memorial Plaza
Mahan Rykiel Assoc., Inc.
(mahanrykiel.com or 410-235-6001)
The award-winning design for Baltimore’s War Memorial Plaza considered many issues and resulted in a program that maintains existing site geometry and vistas; opens up access and visibility at corners; provides added shade to the area; and creates seasonal color displays to showcase Baltimore’s Civic Center. The plan develops plenty of new public seating and allows space for special vendors and events. The site is designed to be low maintenance, incorporate salvaged or reused existing materials, and reduce the visual clutter of excessive signage.
Merit Award
Remsberg Park Master Plan
Morgan State University Dept. of Landscape Architecture
The proposed site for Remsberg Park is a broad ridge with extensive views of farmland and the surrounding mountains. It slopes down to streams on both sides and is bordered by a wooded area that native deer and birdlife call home. A four-lane highway will cut through the park, and new housing will likely be developed to finance the project. The winning design plans for terraces overlooking ball fields, wildflower fields with wind turbines, a picnic shelter, and an orchard.
