Marisa Bernstein (MLA '10) and Nicolas Koff (MLA/MArch '10), Winners of the 2009 ASLA Student Collaboration Honor Award

University of Pennsylvania
Adviser: David Gouverneur

Choroni, Venezuela, is a community in transition, struggling to integrate its largely agricultural past with a growing tourism industry. In season, Choroni's population can swell by a factor of 10, placing an unrealistic burden on the region's infrastructure. Residential neighborhoods have spread without order, at once isolated from one another and encroaching on natural resources. This collaboration between landscape architecture and architecture students imagines completely restructuring Choroni, mixing agricultural, residential, and tourist venues, including creative touches such as combined coconut plantation/campground facility. Jurors were impressed with the seamless collaboration of disciplines and the breadth of the entrants' "big vision."