Presentations from the 2023 LAF Innovation + Leadership Symposium
On June 15, 2023, the 2022-23 cohort from the year-long LAF Fellowship for Innovation and Leadership presented their projects at a symposium in Washington, DC. This unique fellowship program provides a $25,000 award that supports working professionals as they develop and test new ideas to bring about impactful change to the environment and humanity and increase the visibility and leadership role of landscape architecture.
You can view the full recording of the symposium or watch all six individual Fellow presentations below. PLEASE NOTE: The 2023 symposium recordings can no longer be viewed to earn LA CES continuing education credits.
Scaling Up Our Carbon Conscience
Christopher Roth Hardy, Senior Associate, Sasaki
To help address the climate crisis, Christopher developed the Carbon Conscience tool, which can be used by designers, planners, municipalities, and others to create spaces with reduced carbon impacts in mind. The tool builds on previous research as part of an effort to produce verifiable information that can be used in project planning and design phases to show how landscapes, architecture, and planning can work together toward a sustainable future.
Additional Information and Resources:
LAF Fellowship Spotlight: Creating a ‘Carbon Conscience’
Leveraging Climate Adaptation Finance to Realize the Value in Vacant Land
Erin Kelly, Director of Special Projects, Lambert, Rotherstien & Associates
With climate change impacting communities across the country, Erin examined how better stewardship of vacant land could help with mitigation and adaptation efforts. By leveraging climate adaptation financing, the lives of people living near thousands of these vacant properties could be improved. Erin is working to create a national atlas of vacant land within the millions of acres managed by land banks and land trusts to illustrate the opportunity and facilitate investment, research, collaboration, and advocacy at the national level.
Additional Information and Resources:
LAF Fellowship Spotlight: Realizing the Value in Vacant Land
Mega-Eco Projects: Engaging on Large-Scale Nature-Based Solutions
Robert Morrow Levinthal, PhD Candidate, University of Pennsylvania
The world faces two existential crises – biodiversity loss and climate change – that require large-scale environmental restoration and construction endeavors to adequately address them. Many of these projects already exist, and future endeavors promise to be larger and costlier. Robert examines these mega-eco projects and their impacts on communities and the environment, with a goal of helping landscape architects play a more prominent role in developing and delivering them moving forward.
Additional Information and Resources:
LAF Fellowship Spotlight: Mega-Eco Projects for a Changing Climate
Future Problems, Now: Landscape Architecture in the Age of AI
Phillip Fernberg, Instructor and PhD Candidate, Utah State University
As artificial intelligence (AI) improves and its use increases, many landscape architects are apprehensive. Phillip examined AI and its place in the discipline to help designers better understand, prepare for, and use it in the future, with a call to engage in shaping the technology to align with best practices and values. The result is a new frame of thinking for landscape architecture practice fit for a new technological era.
Additional Information and Resources:
LAF Fellowship Spotlight: Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Landscape Architecture
Landscape, Incarceration, and Rehabilitation
Daniel Winterbottom, RSLA, FASLA, Professor, University of Washington
By examining the history, function, and landscape environments of prisons within the U.S. and abroad, Daniel highlights the most – and least – effective of those incarceration models as part of a large-scale effort to improve carceral facilities and offer rehabilitation to those behind bars. His work illuminates the therapeutic implications of differing carceral environments and how nature-based solutions can be positively perceived, used, and designed to facilitate healing, growth, and transformation.
Additional Information and Resources:
LAF Fellowship Spotlight: Landscape, Incarceration, and Rehabilitation
A New Literary Landscape: Graphic Novels to Inspire Landscape Architecture’s Next Generation
Joe James, RLA, ASLA, Principal, Joseph James Landscape Architecture
From vivid drawings of the built environment to a storyline highlighting landscape architecture’s wide-ranging impacts, Joe aims to expose and attract a young and diverse audience to the discipline with a new graphic novel. Landscape architecture plays a key role in the story, from the setting to the characters to the social issues Joe addresses. The goal is to appeal to popular culture audiences, support existing education efforts, and recruit the next generation of designers.
Additional Information and Resources:
LAF Fellowship Spotlight: Attracting the Next Generation of Landscape Architects
FULL Symposium
The 2023 LAF Innovation + Leadership Symposium can be viewed in its entirety. (Runtime 2:16:42)
Symposium Program
Welcome + Opening Remarks
Presentations: Christopher Hardy, Erin Kelly, Robert Levinthal + Moderated Audience Q&A
Presentations: Phillip Fernberg, Daniel Winterbottom, Joe James + Moderated Audience Q&A
Closing Remarks
