TCLF Wins ASLA Honor Award in Communications
The American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) announced last week that TCLF’s Modern Landscapes: Transition & Transformation Book Series has received an Honor Award in the Communications category.
The annual ASLA awards honor top public, commercial, residential, institutional, planning, communications, and research projects in the United States and around the world. The jury considered 459 entries and selected 34 projects to be recognized this year. The awards will be presented during the ASLA Annual Meeting and EXPO in Chicago on Monday, November 9, from 12 Noon to 1:00 p.m. in the Arie Crown Theater at McCormick Place Lakeside Center. The ceremony is open to the public and free of charge.
TCLF’s book series directly addresses the design/historic preservation divide, recognizing that while change is inevitable, landscapes can be transformed with their design integrity intact. Each book focuses on an important mid-century Modernist work, chronicling the planning and design motivations behind the recent work and placing it in its historic context. Richly illustrated with images and drawings—many of which have rarely if ever been seen—the series balances programmatic, design, historic preservation, and environmental concerns while providing practical lessons learned. The first two books, Lawrence Halprin’s Skyline Park and Mellon Square: Discovering a Modern Masterpiece, have received great acclaim and raised awareness of this pressing practice issue. The series is written for landscape architects, allied designers, students, historic preservationists, and other professionals seeking to balance current needs with preservation. The books’ two color, soft-cover design is intentionally low-tech, making them easily readable, portable, and affordable for students. The books are available for purchase on the TCLF website.
“We have lots of anthologies,” the jury commented. “We don’t have many considered texts that go into the complexities of these projects."
TCLF also nominated the Art Institute of Chicago South Garden by Dan Kiley for the ASLA’s Landmark Award, which recognizes a distinguished landscape architecture project completed between 15 and 50 years ago that retains its original design integrity and contributes significantly to the public realm of the community in which it is located.
This intimately scaled garden built atop a parking garage at the Art Institute of Chicago greets more than two million visitors each year and is open to the public, free of charge. Completed in 1967, it is among Dan Kiley’s best-preserved commissions. Joseph P. Karr, FASLA, who worked with Kiley on the project, will be on hand to accept the award, along with David Thurm, chief operating officer of the Art Institute of Chicago.
