A project from a team at Weitzman's EMLab focuses on the restoration of wetlands in New Jersey, including this site around The Wetlands Institute.
This month, the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) announced the 2025 Professional and Student Award winners, which included three projects by Weitzman students and recent alums, as well as one by Weitzman faculty. The ASLA Awards are internationally considered to be among the most prestigious in the field. In addition, the International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA) also presented a design award to a current Weitzman student.
Honor Award: General Design
From Ruins to Roots: Healing through Unity, Growing for the Future
Zicheng Zhao (MLA’24) and Jiewen Hu (MLA’24)
Faculty Advisors: Lucinda Sanders, adjunct professor of landscape architecture; Trevor Lee, lecturer in landscape architecture; and Demetrios Staufinos, lecturer in landscape architecture
The project reimagines the metro stations of Kharkiv, Ukraine, as dual-purpose hubs for shelter and connection, The jury said of this proposal, “[A] powerful example of the role landscape architecture can play in healing even the most profound injustices and deprivations.”
Honor Award: Urban Design
Lugar de Encontro / Landscape of Encounters
Shubhra Goel (MLA’25), Andreina Sojo (MArch/MLA’25), Cassie Zhuang (MLA’25), Minzhi Tang (MLA’25), Peiyao Luo (MLA’25), and Yixuan Zhou (MLA/MUSA’24)
Faculty Advisors: David Gouverneur, associate professor of practice in landscape architecture, and Oscar Grauer, lecturer in landscape architecture
The project is sited at a defunct airport in Sobral, Brazil, and focuses on water filtration and ecological restoration in a place with a distraught relationship with sewage water treatment and urban flooding. The jury said of this proposal, “This concept can be applied to many artifacts of past development to transform our communities.”
Emerging Professionals Design Competition
From Separation to Ambiguity
Jiewen Hu (MLA'24), Kwan Yu (Lillian) Chung (MLA'24), and Zicheng (Kai) Zhao (MLA'24)
The jury awarded first place to From Separation to Ambiguity for its poetic yet pragmatic approach to New Orleans’ relationship with land and water. The project captures the city’s essence by embracing fluid boundaries rather than imposing rigid separations. Jurors praised the team’s compelling narrative, refined material studies, and deep contextual analysis. While modest in scale, the design’s strength lies in its elegant material palette and seamless integration with the broader city fabric. The project stood out as both imaginative and highly buildable—an exemplary model of grounded design excellence.
Honor Award: Research
About Time: Adaptive Management for Coastal Salt Marshes
Sean Burkholder, associate professor of landscape architecture; Keith VanDerSys, senior lecturer in landscape architecture; Karen M'Closkey, associate professor of landscape architecture; with student team
Led by Weitzman’s Environmental Modeling Lab (EMLab), in partnership with The Wetlands Institute, the project team is working with federal and state agencies to model and monitor six wetland restoration sites (about 500 acres) along New Jersey’s coast to inform sediment placement, marsh elevation targets, and vegetation recovery. The jury said of this proposal, “A comprehensive and replicable methodological framework for other coastal work by landscape architects.”
IFLA Student Design Award
Amphibious Edge: Reclaiming Staten Island's Littoral Futures
Poom Sheeranangsu, MLA’26
Poom Sheeranangsu, a current Weitzman MLA student in his final year, received an international student design award from IFLA, the International Federation of Landscape Architects, for his Staten Island studio work in Fall 2024 with Molly Bourne. Poom’s project, entitled “Amphibious Edge: Reclaiming Staten Island’s Littoral Futures,” received third place in Landscape Design as part of the 2025 World Congress Student Competition. Poom traveled to Nantes, France in September to participate in the 2025 IFLA conference, workshop, and award ceremony.
In addition to these team awards, James Andrew Billingsley (MArch/MLA'20), a former lecturer in the Department of Landscape Architecture, is a recipient of The Bradford Williams Medal, which honors writing about landscape architecture, for "Shore Things," The New York Review of Architecture.
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