Design Work by Landscape Architecture Students Wins Regional ASLA Awards

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For her Lake Frances project, Brittany Brown developed a plan to filter the water and strip the soil of the phosphorous pollution, which would help the redevelopment of ecologies in the region as well.

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Design work by Brittany Brown and Katie Dunn, both landscape architecture students in the Fay Jones School of Architecture, recently was recognized by the Central States Region of the American Society of Landscape Architects. Brown won the Honor Award for her design "Lake Frances: Bridging the Rift Between States," and Dunn won a Merit Award for "Euclid Avenue Park: A Gathering Place," both in the "Student: Design (Unbuilt)" category.

Dunn and Brown traveled to Oklahoma City this week to receive their awards at the 10th annual ASLA Central States Regional Conference. They created the projects during their yearlong, fifth-year design studio, led by Judy Brittenum, associate professor of landscape architecture. Brittenum said that the students competed against students from graduate schools for their recognition in the regional awards program.

"Lake Frances: Bridging the Rift Between States" is Brown's design effort to improve the location of a once prosperous lake along the Illinois River on the border of Oklahoma and Arkansas. There is no longer a lake there, as the dam that created it was destroyed in the 1990s. The river and the old lakebed soils both are polluted from watershed runoff.

The first semester of this yearlong senior project was focused on research, with the second focused on design. Brown developed a plan to filter the water and strip the soil of the phosphorous pollution, which would help the redevelopment of ecologies in the region as well.

The former Lake Frances was a major recreational area in the 1920s and 1930s and included a private resort. Inspired by that history, Brown designed a new, public recreational hub that includes a kayak run, a welcome center, campsites, and picnic and swimming areas, along with trails located on top of the old lakebed.

With "Euclid Avenue Park: A Gathering Place," Dunn aimed to create an interstitial social space for families in three underprivileged and underserviced neighborhoods of Cleveland, Ohio, using active and passive green spaces while implementing "green" - or sustainable - infrastructure strategies to mitigate stormwater runoff. She noted that stormwater runoff is the second largest contributor of pollution for Lake Erie.

For the community gathering space, Dunn incorporated landforms, interactive play structures, a splash pad and ice rink, overhang landform and outdoor seating area. The ways the elements are put together in her design also would educate the public about how these "green" infrastructures work.

These layers of trees, hard surfaces, landforms and water collection systems come together in Katie Dunn’s design to create a community gathering space for adjacent neighborhoods in Cleveland, Ohio.

When asked which courses best helped them create their designs, both highlighted their construction classes as ones in which they received necessary knowledge on topics such as stormwater runoff and drainage. Producing designs like these, though, is a culmination of all landscape architecture courses, they agreed.

Third-year studio focused heavily on the environment and ecologies, while fourth-year studio was about urban design, Dunn said. "Melding the two" is what she was going for with this senior design project.

Brown said she thought it was important to work on a project of this scale. "I thought it deepened the view of our profession," she said. "We're not just people who design people's backyards. We do that, but that is just one aspect of it. For this project, I got to use my creative skill set for an environmental issue. It's not just about aesthetics, and it's not just about an environmental impact... It's about putting it all together."

Along the same lines, Dunn believes that "green" practices in design should be a given at this point, but designers shouldn't turn their backs entirely on aesthetics and "creating a place that people would want to go."

Brown humbly commented on the prestige of an award such as this, stating that, although the project hasn't won on the national level (yet), she was the only student to receive an Honor Award in this category. She said it already has helped her network with potential employers, and she now has something to add to her resume to show that the year of hard work paid off.

The six ASLA chapters in the Central States Region are Arkansas, Great Plains, Iowa, Oklahoma, Prairie Gateway and St. Louis. These chapters encompass the eight states of Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska and Iowa.

After the regional conference, Brown said, she plans to submit her design on the national level.