CE+D Team Wins GA-ASLA Honor Award for Work in Atlanta’s Historic Fourth Ward
A design team from the College of Environment and Design recently took home an honor award for research at this year’s awards ceremony of the Georgia Chapter, American Society of Landscape Architects. Professors Jon Calabria, Brian Orland, and Alfie Vick, Research Fellows chosen by the Landscape Architecture Foundation (LAF), and MLA candidate Rachel Shields were part of a cohort of landscape architects working with HDR, Inc., an Atlanta environmental engineering firm, on a project for Atlanta’s historic Fourth Ward. HDR designed the site while the CED team ran evaluations on its performance. The year-long study identified and developed methods to quantify environmental, economic, and social benefits for this high performing, urban park in downtown Atlanta.
The Georgia Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects sponsors the annual competition for practitioners and academics working in Georgia. This year’s gala announcing the award was held March 9th in Buckhead, Atlanta.
With the hard work of MLA candidate Rachael Shields, the team also evaluated the UGA Science Center. Tripp Lowe at Warnell School of Forestry had input as well. Using a drone, Lowe flew and analyzed aerial photography of the sites.
Both case studies briefs were peer reviewed, assigned a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), and are accessible below, under the methodology section:
https://www.landscapeperformance.org/case-study-briefs/fourth-ward-park
The Historic Fourth Ward project was among eight exemplary landscape projects for the Landscape Foundation’s 2018 Case Study Investigation (CSI)program. Now in its ninth year, the CSI program is a research collaboration that matches LAF-funded faculty/student research teams with design firms to measure and document the benefits of high-performing landscapes. Teams conduct research and document their projects through images and narrative that includes background information, descriptions of sustainable features, and lessons learned. The resulting Case Study Briefs are published in LAF’s award-winning Landscape Performance Series database of over 150 projects.