LAF recently received two grants to support the 2013 Case Study Investigation (CSI) program. CSI is a unique research collaboration that matches LAF-funded student-faculty research teams with leading practitioners to document the benefits of exemplary high-performing landscape projects. The 2013 program features 8 research teams working to evaluate the performance of 24 landscape projects, ranging from the Tassajara Creek Restoration in California to the Ann Arbor Municipal Center in Michigan.

The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation has granted $10,000 to support three Chicago-area projects that are being documented through the 2013 CSI program: Advocate Lutheran General Hospital, Jackson Park and the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry’s Smart Home: Green + Wired.

For the second year in a row, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has supported the CSI program with a $25,000 Art Works grant. LAF is one of only 50 nonprofit organizations throughout the country recommended to receive an NEA Art Works grant in the Design category. The NEA received 1,547 eligible applications for this round of Art Works funding. Of those, 817 are recommended for grants totaling $26.3 million to support the creation of art that meets the highest standards of excellence, public engagement with diverse and excellent art, lifelong learning in the arts, and the strengthening of communities through the arts. Visit the NEA website for a complete listing of projects recommended for Art Works grant support.

The Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture (CELA) has announced that it will offer a new “Landscape Performance” track at its annual conference, starting in 2014. The CELA conference focuses on recent research and scholarship in all aspects of landscape architecture.

“The decision to offer this track underscores the explosion in interest and number of proposals that CELA has seen in recent years on this topic,” said CELA President Sean Michael, PhD.

“Landscape performance should be fundamental knowledge in landscape architecture, though it is not highly developed yet,” said CELA Vice President of Research Ming-Han Li, PhD, PE, PLA. “The new track will help ensure that the latest research and thinking on landscape performance is a regular part of the dialogue at the CELA conference.”

Landscape Performance joins ten track categories used to organize the conference sessions and papers: Design Education & Pedagogy, Communication & Visualization, Design Implementation, Urban Design, Landscape Planning & Ecology, Research & Methods, Service Learning & Community Engagement, Sustainability, People-Environment Relationships, and History, Theory & Culture. Members of the academic community and others submit abstracts to each track for peer review which, when accepted, are presented at the annual conference and published in the proceedings.

LAF will co-chair the new Landscape Performance track along with a representative from CELA. The move is the latest step in an ongoing partnership between the two organizations. In 2011, the CELA Vice President of Research began serving on the LAF Research Committee, and last year, CELA and LAF leadership began serving on in an ex officio capacity on the other organization’s Board of Directors.

For more than 90 years, CELA has been concerned with the content and quality of professional education in landscape architecture and with generating high quality research.