LAND Faculty Win 8 ASLA Awards

An open book displays an aerial map with labeled features, including rivers, lakes, and coastline, alongside descriptive text on the left page.

Eight projects completed by Landscape Architecture faculty were recognized in the 2026 American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA), Alabama Chapter awards this summer.

The ASLA Alabama Chapter is the state branch of a professional association for landscape architects in the United States. Its mission is to advance landscape architecture through advocacy, communication, education and fellowship. Faculty from the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture (APLA) raked in awards from design to analysis to communications.

Assistant Professors Isaac Cohen and Sarah Coleman received a Communications Merit Award for Generative Care, a body of work and an event that promotes maintenance and preservation for the Florence Mound, a Woodland Era Indigenous Mound in North Alabama.

In February, stakeholders gathered at the Florence Mound for a symposium.
In February, stakeholders gathered at the Florence Mound for a symposium.
Leafless trees on a sloped hill at sunset, with a modern stone building on the right and a clear blue sky in the background.
The Mound rises 43 feet in the air with a flat top from which visitors can look out at the landscape.

Cohen also received an Analysis and Planning Merit Award with Assistant Professor Gwendolen Cohen, in collaboration with Martin Rickles Studio, for their project Redeeming Grace Ministries, a housing and support service for women transitioning out of correctional facilities. The soon-to-be-constructed design uses trauma-informed care strategies to create a safe, supportive environment that supports healing and growth.

A diagram shows stages of support at Redeeming Grace Ministry, from public to private spaces, including homes, gardens, and areas for reflection, socializing, and family reunification.
Trauma-informed care recognizes the widespread impact of trauma and prioritizes the creation of safe, supportive environments for healing and growth.

Hillworks Design, an Auburn-based landscape architecture studio run by Professor David Hill, received four awards for design.

Porch House was awarded the Residential Design Honor Award for the transformation of a vacant warehouse ruin in downtown Opelika into an immersive garden residence with native plantings and weathered remnants of the site’s industrial past.

Adaptive reuse as both a practical and generative strategy guides the design’s approach to the site, working with the existing traces of history rather than clearing the property for new construction.
Adaptive reuse as both a practical and generative strategy guides the design’s approach to the site, working with the existing traces of history rather than clearing the property for new construction.

Just outside of Auburn, the Waverley Woodland Garden received a Residential Design Merit Award for dissolving the boundary between a cultivated yard and a wild forest. The layered native plant communities bring the woodland ecosystem close to the life of the home.

At every stage, the garden was designed with ecological impact in mind.
At every stage, the garden was designed with ecological impact in mind.
Five wooden chairs are arranged around a stone fire pit in a gravel clearing, surrounded by trees and green foliage in an outdoor setting.
The garden began with a simple ambition: to blur the line between forest and yard, prioritizing a mix of native plants borrowed from the palette of the surrounding forests.

Located along the Atlanta Beltline, Breaker Breaker received a Merit Award in General Design for a restaurant space in a former steel fabrication yard. The design uses a salvaged steel shed for a canopy that shades indoor and outdoor dining spaces with expressive plantings.

Three people walk on a concrete path near a landscaped area with tall green plants and a large, open-roofed structure in the background.
Breaker Breaker transforms the fabrication yard into a unique public landscape, preserving the memory of Atlanta’s industrial history while creating a quirky, welcoming place for dining, gathering and connection.
A person walks on a path in front of a building with a Breaker Breaker sign. A yellow industrial crane structure is visible.
Through adaptive reuse and expressive planting, the project celebrates the site’s industrial legacy while establishing a playful destination for the neighborhood.

Also the recipient of the Merit Award for General Design, First Avenue Public Way consists of a small planting model that serves as a spatial structure to re-engage the historic Cotton Warehouse District of Opelika.

The First Avenue Public Way offers critical deviation from the static, tidy and tightly controlled landscapes of the area.
The First Avenue Public Way offers critical deviation from the static, tidy and tightly controlled landscapes of the area.

The Landscape Infrastructure Design Lab (LIDL), directed by Associate Professor and Undergraduate Landscape Architecture Chair Rob Holmes, received two awards.

Holmes’s book “Silt Sand Slurry: Dredging, Sediment and the Worlds We Are Making” that was published in 2024 won a Communications Honor Award for examining the wider issues surrounding dredging through projects in four areas of the U.S.

Two copies of the book Silt Sand Slurry are shown; one is closed, displaying the cover, and the other is open, revealing illustrated pages about sediment and environmental topics.
Silt Sand Slurry investigates where, why and how sediment is central to the future of America’s coasts.

The book ties into LIDL’s Four Coasts Project, which received an Honor and Excellence Award for Analysis and Planning, that investigates landscape architecture infrastructure to combat sea level rise, habitat loss, generations of environmental injustice, post-industrial decline and the continued growth of urban centers near the Great Lakes, New York Harbor, Mississippi Delta and San Francisco’s Bay-Delta coastal areas.

Map showing project sites along the Pacific Coast, Gulf Coast, Atlantic Coast, and Great Lakes, each marked with colored boxes and icons indicating resilience activities and partnerships.
The Four Coasts project strategically engaged United States Army Corps of Engineers districts on each of the coasts of the lower 48 states: Pacific, Gulf, Atlantic and Great Lakes.

“We are honored to have the work of our faculty recognized by our professional colleagues,” Holmes said. “The quality and breadth of the built landscapes, planning studies and scholarship cataloged in these awards speaks directly to both the excellence that we as faculty aim to prepare our students to achieve and the faculty’s desire to stand alongside those professional colleagues in advancing landscape architecture in Alabama.”

See more in:
Creative Work, Cultural Heritage Preservation, Faculty Collaboration, Faculty Recognition, Faculty Work, Industry Recognition, Landscape Infrastructure Design Lab (LIDL), Natural Infrastructure, Research, Student Experience, Sustainable Design and Development

Related people:
Isaac Cohen, Sarah Coleman, Gwendolyn Cohen, Rob Holmes, David Hill