LILA Records 2016 –

Below is an ordered list of all LILA winners and special mentions from the first edition of LILA in 2016.

Prof. Dr Lisa Diedrich (b. 1965, Minden, Germany) studied landscape architecture, architecture, urbanism and has a certificate in journalism. She held several academic positions as a professor of landscape architecture; the more recent include the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and, since this year, she has been a professor at the Walter Gropius Chair, University of Buenos Aires, Faculty of Architecture, Design and Urbanism, Argentina. Her teaching record spans over two decades and comprises various landscape architecture programmes at universities in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Germany, The Netherlands, Spain, Argentina and Australia.

Besides the plethora of remarkable positions and achievements in the academic sphere, the editors of Landezine specifically recognise Diedrich's outstanding contribution to the professional discussion on topics concerning landscape architecture. Through her work as editor-in-chief of LAE – Landscape Architecture Europe and co-editor-in-chief of 'scape, the International Magazine for Landscape Architecture and Urbanism, she has continuously taken leadership in bringing in focus topics and notions relevant to our time. Both publications significantly impacted how we think about European landscape architecture and with 'scape also internationally.

The editors of Landezine further recognise Diedrich's profound ability to voice her thoughts on practice. Her writings beautifully balance the professional, grounded, objective critique with more personal, often poetic notions and comparisons. Her soberly precise and methodological yet at the same time abstract, 'full-bodied' vocabulary reflects the very contrasts embedded in the design process of landscape architects.

LILA Honour Award 2023 celebrates Diedrich's already outstanding career that will hopefully inspire many landscape architects to participate in reflection, to be curious and continuously challenge their work.

LILA 2023 Honour Award Winner

Prof. Dr. Lisa Diedrich

Battleiroig is a multidisciplinary firm celebrated for its innovative and sustainable designs that have made a significant impact on the field of landscape architecture both within Spain and Europe. Founded in Barcelona, Spain, by Enric Batlle and Joan Roig in 1981, the firm has gained international recognition for its progressive approach to design. They have been at the forefront of the ‘Catalan wave’ of the nineties, pushed by Oriol Bohigas’ plans for The Barcelona 1992 Olympic Games, which made spectacular never seen before projects possible. The ‘wave’ included names such as EMBT, RCR Arquitectes, Arriola & Fiol arquitectes, Manuel Ruisánchez, MICHELE & MIQUEL, Bet Figueras, Beth Gali, Teresa Galí-Izard, later EMF and others. Already in that time, the work of Batlleiroig helped bring contemporary design attitudes from the region into an international focus and also influence.

The editors of Landezine recognize Batlleiroig’s multidisciplinary approach that has been continuously bringing projects that challenge their briefs, find smart answers and materialize in aesthetically convincing creations fit to their time and context. There is an evident omnipresent quality in the design language of their work – a mix of subtle but still joyful play and, at the same time, calm sobriety that often supports witty solutions.

The project for Garraf Landfill, also awarded LILA 2023 in Revisited Projects category, was based on a landscape idea that served as the main guideline for this very technical transformation. The Forest Path cemetery questions the very structure of symbolic particularities of landscape in terms of our relationship to life and death and proposes a shift of the spiritual to the immediate nature. The Scenic Path Along Igualada’s Old Gypsum Mines was awarded LILA 2019 in Public Category for its unique blend of subtle design that explores existing landscape qualities and a new layer of playfulness that gives the project a new frame. In Esplugues de Llobregat’s modification of the General Metropolitan Plan, they questioned how a productive landscape could be made fit for public use in an innovative way.

The editors of Landezine appreciate the office's fitness to conquer complex problems and come up with solutions that can move visitors rather than entertain them.

LILA 2023 Office of the Year Winner

Batlleiroig Arquitectura

Batlleiroig Arquitectura

The Dark Line is a former railway that, for most of the 20th century, served as the main transport route for coal to nearby ports. After the closure of the mines, the area, due to its scenic qualities, became increasingly popular with visitors. Now the Dark Line is a part of the tourism infrastructure emphasising the area's industrial heritage.

The Dark Line is a generous, confident and yet careful intervention that materialises through a sequence of uniquely moulded rebars. The choice of the material fits the postindustrial site and handles all topographical anatomies, the site's historical charge and its purpose seemingly effortlessly. Complementing the lush green vegetation, the dark brown steel carries a dense atmosphere along the former railway and beautifully balances the transitional character of this space with a sequence of ambiences where one can stop, rest and observe.

From a phenomenological perspective, the rebars are, essentially, materialised cross-sections that outline the elements such as fences, benches, and pavement. Elements are described by shaping the rebars as if they exist only through a series of descriptions.

Besides the well-crafted material, the jury appreciates how masterfully the designers embraced and responded to simple spatial facts that often go ignored in landscape architecture, those concerning the shifting conditions of light, surrounding vegetation, morphology and cultural memory.

The jury finds the Dark Line project as a sublime intervention that respects the local ecology and greatly enriches the site's functional, historical and aesthetical dimensions with incredible charisma and grace.

LILA 2023 Project of the Year

mICHELE&mIQUEL and dA VISION DESIGN

Bridgefoot Street Park is a story about public space, community participation, circular economy, and ecological measures, and, above all, it is a project that well reflects our growing care for social and environmental issues of urban open space in the 21st century.

DFLA carefully embedded particular design approaches that have been occurring in the landscape architecture community in the past decade into a successful whole. The 'beautiful messiness' of the design language of the concrete surfaces reminds us of Catherine Mosbach's approach to shape-finding. They suggest free use and are a platform for the community to get together and play. The 'curiosity' of the hill composed of demolition debris reminds us of Governor's Island in NYC.

But it is not only the debris that forms the play of topography; other elements found on site were catalogued and were given a second life, a new meaning and a new purpose in a creative way. This is one of the most important challenges for landscape architects, namely recycling, upcycling and reducing the shipment of material to its minimum.

Bridgefoot Street Park is an extremely well designed hectare of urban land. The jury also praises the universal value of Bridgefoot Street Park; cities of various latitudes will hopefully learn from this approach and will have a benchmark for a reference.

LILA 2023 Winner in Public Landscapes

Bridgefoot Street Park

DFLA

C21 is a small, almost left-over space by the Atelierhaus, a building where creative freelancers and artists live and work. Despite the scale of the site, rajek barosch landscape architecture managed to design a complex but comfortable space that takes into account the surroundings, water management, the residents and biodiversity.

It is a densely planted small piece of urban wilderness, wedged in between a road, an entrance in the underground garage, air-ventilation infrastructure, the building and the train tracks. The jury appreciated how these site-specific conditions were allowed to co-exist with the design. Similar to Bridgefoot Street Park, the C21 garden well represents the future of compact cities where small spaces will need to take on such elaborate designs in order to improve the quality of living for all living beings.

Although this urban landscape is intended for a relatively slim layer of the local social strata, one can easily imagine such a design attitude can cater for the needs of more diverse profiles and age groups. The jury applauded the incredibly effective use of space and, above all, the open dialogue between the garden and the surroundings - contribution to the genius loci that well reflects living in the Anthropocene.

LILA 2023 Winner in Residential Landscapes

Atelierhaus C21

rajek barosch

The landscape for Rwanda Institute for Conservation Agriculture is a multidisciplinary effort to establish a diverse and healthy working, studying and dwelling environment.

From the design perspective, MASS Design Group found a delicate balance between complementing architecture with very subtle beautification, empowering campus spaces, immediate agricultural land fields embedded in the campus, the rural landscape outside the campus and nature.

The design for the campus is based on the health and well-being of people, animals and the environment. The plan extends to protecting two savannah zones, a wetland buffer, and corridors for biodiversity. It implements wastewater systems and on-site waste management and is overall a highly ecological plan. It achieves many goals relevant to the site, programme and challenges of today whilst considering localities, carefully interwoven in the design and building of architecture and landscape.

LILA 2023 Winner in Campuses and Corporate Landscapes

Rwanda Institute for Conservation Agriculture

MASS Design Group

Carve's work in the historic Tophane Park is largely based on a curious object made of stone. It seems that with its contemporary appearance it questions its historic surroundings. It is a complex morphology that offers many different types of play. In Carve's words, it comprises stimulating challenges for 'sliding, stepping, climbing, lounging, crawling, performing, balancing' and also invites other unforeseen means of interaction. All in one excellent exercise in shape and material. The jury praised the use of local craftsmanship. The shaping of the stone wouldn't be possible in many other countries due to high expenses, which, essentially, makes it site-specific.

Furthermore, due to its sculptural quality, it doesn't necessarily look like a playground. The design of the playground holds many situations with an abstract charge; there is a hole that can act as a door, and there is a clear distinction between being inside and outside, up and down, so children may see it as a fortress, a space-ship, a creature from another world ...

The object's context, everlasting material, contemporary shape, and its relation to the park and the trees offer enough contrasts and use interpretations that engage the imagination of children much more than conventional, catalogue-based playgrounds.

LILA 2023 Winner in Schools and Playgrounds

Tophane park playground

Carve

Garraf is a long-term infrastructure project that transformed a vast amount of waste into agricultural land in its final step. The jury appreciated the role of design in this complex infrastructural landscape rehabilitation project since the entire programme for the closure of the Garraf Landfill was based on an initial landscape idea. The result is an interesting morphology that tells the story of its past with a beautiful surface fit for future use.

LILA 2023 Winner in Revisited Projects

Landscape restoration of the Garraf Controlled Waste Landfill in Barcelona

Batlleiroig Arquitectura

The Park of Encounters is a complex design that deals with the public use of a once-army base. Built by the Nazi regime in 1937 and taken over by Allied forces after the war, Campbell Barracks later served as NATO HQ for Europe, which closed in the mid-2010s. Decades of army use left a palimpsest of traces that were waiting to be reinterpreted.

The jury recognises how difficult and yet successful it was to redesign this army-charged site with 'respectful lightness' and a 'slight twist of humour' as if the designers wanted to decompress the site and add play in a witty, nearly mischievous way. That is evident, for example, in a stripe of play elements that run through the entrance checkpoint, emphasising its disuse, or colouring and displacing the found artefacts from the 1970s. In a different configuration, stripped of their original use, these artefacts represent the retreat of control, repression and are abstracted into new constellations, provoking new interpretations and ways of interaction.

The jurors appreciated this underlying attitude, also resulting in elegant and much more subtle means of change, for example, mixing and shredding of the existing pavements and using them anew. The material/colour palette is exceptionally well thought-through; it communicates the different layers of the site's palimpsest and connects different parts into a coherent whole.

LILA 2023 Special Mention in Public Landscapes

The Park of Encounters

Robin Winogrond, Studio Vulkan

The jury recognized the masterful dialogue between the old and new, the more restrained approach to the redesign of 'urban villages' in dense Chinese city centres. Wanggang Park is a social space that is, above all, generous to its users and respectful of traditional elements from the rich Chinese culture. Several concrete elements of the existing structures were rearranged to reference ancient calligraphic elements. The abundance of features for sitting and covering provides shelter in less favourable weather conditions. Wanggang Park is, considering its historical milieu, a remarkable social space well equipped for transgenerational use.

LILA 2023 Special Mention in Public Landscapes

Guangzhou Wanggang Park – A Timeless Community Park Bringing together Young and Old

Guangzhou S.P.I Design

The Forest Path is part of a larger, existing cemetery, where Batlleiroig designed one of their first projects as early as 1985. A shift in people's relation to burial traditions and issues of space brought the need for a new, more nature-friendly means of burial practice.

Batlleiroig designed a Krainer wall structure, ready to host plants and wooden urns that contain the ashes. With time, the wooden logs and the urns will disintegrate, leaving behind a slope overgrown by plants that will further change through the passing of seasons. This reference to the cycle of life effectively acts as the memorial whilst providing more efficient use of land, infrastructure and other resources.

Besides the progressive and innovative solution, the jury was also charmed by the elegant design of the Forest Path and its forest-edge ambience.

LILA 2023 Special Mention in Public Landscapes

Forest path in the Roques Blanques Cemetery in the Collserola Natural Park

Batlleiroig Arquitectura

The Fire Ring is an object in the landscape, seemingly simple yet a complex node of several design intentions. The simplicity of the circle is challenged by the playful displacement of the logs and by orientation. The elegance of the shape is contrasted by the rough treatment of the surface of the logs. Furthermore, there is an ambiguous relation between the Fire Ring having a public or private feel. In this regard, the jury appreciated the scale, being too large for groups to claim it for private use and too small to lose the sense of 'togetherness'. In terms of the overall attitude that shaped this object, and in the words of the designer, the Fire Ring transcends» one's own body, local culture and global lifestyles«. That makes the Fire Ring not only an object or a playscape but (also literally) a hotspot that captures and radiates multiple relevant notions and contextual particularities.

LILA 2023 Special Mention in Other Typologies

Robin Winogrond

The jury was impressed by this subtle an elegant physical transformation that is at the same time bold in its colour and scale. A generous covering of the central courtyard reveals a whole new dimension of this tourist centre and of the overall spatial context. The jurors specifically appreciated the way in which the shape of the roof channels the rainfall and thus allows for the emergence of the entrance 'garden'.

LILA 2023 Special Mention in Other Typologies

The Red Pavilion

mICHELE&mIQUEL and dA VISION DESIGN

At first glance, this garden completely ignores or even challenges all the dogmas of garden design 'by the book'. However, at a closer look, it offers a number of appropriate statements and manages to remain open to interpretations.

The oversized stairs seem to have no excuse, yet they embody a sculptural dimension whilst providing seating in a peculiar grove of densely planted trees and shrubs. More importantly, the stairs lead out of the garden, through a small door in a wooden fence, into the forest, where a 'forest garden' ambience is achieved by almost nothing - a table and a hammock.

There are several different dialogues between pastureland and forest, private and public, an object and its context, inside and outside, but above all, between a garden as a notion and its relation to the surroundings. The design seems to be based on questioning, yet it feels entirely confident at the same time.

This garden is full of deliberate contradictions, contrasts, beautiful strangeness, and the jury was inspired by the scope of questions it poses with so little.

LILA 2023 Special Mention in Private Gardens

Betania Forest Garden

Ruderal

Estudio Ome again receives recognition with a lush garden, and the jury was impressed by Ome's ability to blur the margins between the 'wild' and the 'tamed'. The garden establishes a firm and fitting relation between the geometry of the architecture, new features and the forest. The designers added the notion of 'ruin', where the intention was to render some new structures rapidly overgrown by the lush vegetation as if they were historic remains being rediscovered. This is achieved carefully through vegetation letting it kick in and, formally, by just the right amount of suggestion that doesn't feel overdone at all. Or, in the words of the designers, they questioned 'how the landscape project could possibly disappear with time or reappear when used'. Such a design statement reflects a mature attitude where playfulness also embeds a much larger question of the temporality of the garden.

LILA 2023 Special Mention in Private Gardens

Estudio Ome

Werkspoorkwartier is a commercial/production area near Utrecht. It looks similar to many other such areas across Europe. A rhythm of warehouses where open space is mostly defined by parking and lorry access, and there is a critical shortage of pedestrian and green infrastructure. The lack of a sensible masterplan is often the main issue, especially as these are vibrant spaces where people work or spend time as customers.

Flux designed spaces around an old bridge factory which now hosts businesses, restaurants and event venues. The other part of the project is the Werkspoor path, a 2,5km pedestrian necklace commissioned by the municipality. Both parts can act as benchmarks for improving warehouse areas. The jury appreciated the systemic approach to the redesign, the sense of the visual language effortlessly handling all the challenges, and the translation of the industrial feel of the site into a contemporary work environment. The project, at the same time looks ordinary and excels in detailing, materiality and implementation of green infrastructure.

LILA 2023 Special Mention in Campuses and Corporate

Werkspoorcampus

Flux landscape architecture

Buurtschap Te Veld is a temporary, mid-term residential area that was pushed into being by the critical shortage of housing around Eindhoven. Built on a plot that is close to the highway and not meant to be built permanently, a plan was accepted that will offer a 30-year interim solution and will also be used to strengthen the ecological characteristics of the landscape once the housing is moved. Only the bare minimum is hardscape, ensuring routes for pedestrians, cyclists and cars. The rest is landscape, used as 'commons'. Hundreds of new trees will be planted, re-creating the ‘chambers’ structure of the original landscape that was lost. The landscape that will further be populated with small clusters of housing, based on the old Dutch principle of a 'Buurtschap' a small neighbourhood that is characterised by its tight-knit social network and mutual help. The land in between the houses is shared and treated as commons. A robust water system is implemented for buffering and infiltrating water.

The jury praises the experimental approach, both in housing typologies and the experiment of how communities can live together based on a shared public space/landscape without private appropriation. The jury is curious how the landscape will grow and mature in the coming three decades and what the profession can learn from this approach.

LILA 2023 Special Mention in Residential Landscapes

Buurtschap Te Veld

Studio BLAD

Fish Cycle Wieringermeer is a fish habitat, an ecological link between the Amstelmeer canal and the water system of the polder.

The project represents an interesting blend of the more playful approach to design and technical, ecological measures.

The jurors appreciated the honestly artificial, visibly anthropogenic structure that doesn't aim to pretend to be a result of natural processes and is entirely oblivious of any »ecological aesthetics«. The true ecology is found in the complexities of litoral morphology with shifting sun conditions that result in a biodiverse water habitat and give the necessary living environment to fish.

LILA 2023 Special Mention in Infrastructure Projects

Fish Cycle Wieringermeer

HOSPER

Ruby Zielinski is currently finishing her masters in landscape architecture at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. She has a bachelor degree (BFA) in Graphic Design from the Memphis College of Art, studied mathematics in Arkansas and also describes herself as a musician, storyteller and explorer. Her background, the diversity of skills and interests perhaps contributed to her visibly colourful approach to problem solving. Her portfolio reflects remarkable understanding of spatial complexities concerning function, heritage, ecology, and community engagement. The editors of Landezine also appreciate the clear and aesthetically sound visual communication and experimental approach.

LILA 2023 Winner of the Portfolio Award for Students and Young Professionals

Portfolio: Ruby Zielinski

Gilles Clément (1943) is a French landscape architect or better 'paysagiste', having a more garden design-related background. He is also a botanist, entomologist, and writer. His most important achievements are both in theory and practice. Through his work, Clément shows many paths to a more biodiverse future as he focuses on what truly matters to the well-being of all species. His approach is about effortlessness, working with natural forces and always celebrating diversity. It is a treasure of knowledge and a showcase of attitudes fit for the future, hence of great importance to our global professional community.

LILA 2022 Honour Award Winner

Gilles Clément

Gilles Clément

Bureau B+B has been around for more than 40 years. In The Netherlands it is righteously considered a cradle of successful landscape architects. Despite the vast portfolio and the inseparable heritage of B+B, the editors of Landezine were convinced and impressed by the latest projects that were designed by a team of young designers.

We recognize the work of Bureau B+B, mainly for their ability of combining innovative engineering approaches with context based design. They master a diverse span of attitudes; from being subtle and quiet, to making radical changes, or being playful. B+B's recent designs reflect all the needed skills for handling complex tasks; from a busy urban train station to residential landscapes fit for the future, to wetlands.

But it is the work that tackles heritage sites that really separates B+B from an already remarkable crowd of Dutch landscape architects. The precision that is found in Tempel and Nieuw Rhodenrijs Estates or the conceptual clarity of the LILA 2019 winning project Objets Trouvés reflects the ability to untangle time-related complexities, to curate and to offer new, meaningful experiences.

LILA 2022 Office of the Year Winner

Bureau B+B urbanism and landscape architecture

Bureau B+B Urbanism and Landscape Architecture

Cycling Through is an ongoing project in Limburg, Belgium, where three stages of the project are realised (Cycling Through Heathland, Cycling Through Trees, and Cycling Through Water) with further ‘Cycling Through the Underground’ still underway.

The project deals with the restructuring of the Limburg area, where coal mining was closed throughout the 1980s and 1990s. A new identity and strategy for the province were envisioned, namely cycling tourism, that would take visitors out in the landscape and emphasise both the natural and cultural/industrial heritage. The team at Tourism Limburg was inspired by the Norway Tourist Routes, specifically how they connect scenic places and design.

LILA 2022 Winner of the Special Jury Award

Cycling Through Limburg

Visit Limburg

This tiny urban backyard was transformed into a rich and dense layering of atmospheres and uses. The design recycles already extracted but discarded granite blocks from a local quarry – a sustainable attitude of working with the land. The charcoal grey, or 'Graveyard' granite, as central feature, pays homage to the depths of the local strata. The design explores the conventional concept of extending the interior spaces into the garden, yet done by an interweaving and shifting of wild landscape, threshholds and architectural planes. So, the tiny garden space is experienced as much larger than it is. The sunken garden 'quarry' is embedded in a dense thicket of birches and hemlocks, creating a mysterious atmosphere which neither the body, mind nor spirit can tire of.

For an American context, the Quarry garden is surprisingly modest, effortlessly disconnecting from the more traditional codes where a garden would often be dominated by an abundance of features, shapes and things.

LILA 2022 Winner in Private Gardens

TEN x TEN

The project by Kotsiuba offers a rich experience for the IT community on the campus. It responds to the blend of the post-industrial and corporate character of the site by the subtle play of pavement and establishing garden-like ambiences. There are two main open areas for events that reflect the urban scale of the project. A thick woodland band that includes playgrounds and sports areas buffers the campus space from a busy road. The uncluttered detailing provides an open and flowing space and contrasts with the articulated and diverse facades of the buildings.

LILA 2022 Winner in Campuses and Corporate Landscapes

UNIT City 2nd Stage

Kotsiuba

The 129 km long, 900 hectare restoration of Erhai Lake greatly improves the quality of the "iconic yet filthy water" while connecting it to the surrounding towns. The lake has spiritual value for many communities, such as the Shuanglang and Xizhou, and serves as a place of worship for the Bai people, an ethnic minority of over 50% of Dali. The beautiful aquatic, blooming Ottelia acuminata is an indicator species and its significant return demonstrates the new sustainability of the lake.

The developed masterplan uses dynamic measures and methods in diverse scales to limit poor development practices and respond to social challenges, achieving maximal ecological benefit with minimal human intervention. With a multitude of government and local players, the project reinvigorates and monitors the entire watershed with waterscape management. The included slow traffic ways and facilities have created a boom in daily usage of the lake.

LILA 2022 Ex-Aequo Winner in Infrastructure Projects

Reblooming Here: Erhai Lake Ecological Restoration Project

Arcplus, Zeho

The project well addresses the dialogue between different scales – the well articulated and complex general layout of the park and the 'touch and feel' scale, sensitive and rich in detail. It establishes simple and unpretentious spaces with care and sincerity to its visitors.

It presents a courageous and intelligent use of color and proposes an ambience that, managing to constitute an excellent playground for children, escapes the banality of the usual catalogue-based playgrounds It also succeeds in involving a great diversity of uses to all ages of visitors, demonstrating the significant advantages of less determined spaces.

LILA 2022 Winner in Schools and Playgrounds

Songzhuang Micro Community Park

Crossboundaries

No site is 'tabula rasa', but sometimes, sites demand more creation than translation. This is the case with The Unbound, an imaginative design for a tourist resort based on being with the landscape, observing nature, and participating in food production. Despite the non-site-specific design language that unnecessarily neglects this area's history as a characteristic dutch polder, the design for this high-end tourist resort adds to the bigger picture of a new, more natural green recreational wedge in the city of Amsterdam that brings tourists and inhabitants closer to the landscape and nature. Resort guests are invited to take part in the outside world, by which The Unbound gives new meaning to recreation in a city like Amsterdam.

Complex pathways together with strong low vegetation allow for the space to feel mysterious, a space that needs to be explored. Once the trees grow, another layer of complexity will reveal itself and add additional dynamics to the site.

LILA 2022 Winner in Hospitality

Felixx

LILA 2022 Ex-Aequo Winner in Infrastructure Projects

Nieuwe verbinding N69” (new provincial connection N69), greenest road of the province of Brabant

H+N+S Landscape Architects

Buro Harro envisioned an entirely artificial little piece of landscape with subtle humour and incredible craftsmanship. The landscape of the dutch dunes, with its vegetation, essentially acts as a small biodiversity generator. Water retention is hidden under the sand on the roof, and all the necessary technicalities are nicely put out of sight. The wooden hut gives it a relaxed, 'holiday-ish' mood. It is a 'fragment', a pocket landscape that offers more than enough clues that will transport you to a beach. The wind comes as the magic dust that makes this sandy roof garden come to life as one can be drawn into the feeling of being in the dunes ... while taking a swim! Witty and smart!

LILA 2022 Winner in Residential Landscapes

Dune Roof, Groenmarkt, Amsterdam

Buro Harro

This beautiful light, designed by Michiel Cornelissen and manufactured by Dutch company Dexter is ready to quietly supplement a range of different landscape typologies and contexts. Its design is smart and minimal and radiates subtle humour and elegance.

LILA 2022 Winner in Products

Dexter Lighting

The ecolodge resort and recreational landscape project on the Poonehzar Farm are about the joy of dwelling outside, in the countryside. The design uses the existing corn fields, with their spatial and experiential maze qualities, as a starting point, inserting structures such as baths, an event platform, a fire pit and a lookout tower for temporary dwellings. These simple gestures establish a viewpoint and more intimate shelters or, better, a series of 'rooms' each with its purpose. It is remarkably simple and, at the same time, creative. The cornfield and the metal structure may be seen as a garden/labyrinth and a tower. The fact that the site is in culturally rich Iran adds a mythical dimension to the experience.

Poonehzar is a true garden built of agricultural material. The field of corn makes it 'another space' and adds to the enchantment. Or, in the words of the designers, »highlighting the boundaries of private and common, the playful childish sneak peeks, the innocent erotic air, the mania of being lost, the suspense of diving in imagination.« This is, in fact, a beautiful description of the meaning of a garden, be it physical or mental space.

LILA 2022 Special Mention in Hospitality

Shid Architects

The project is a good example of an appropriate and well balanced intervention, not needing to resort to the glamor of images to convince around its ability to build a bond between users and built space. The jury appreciated low-cost interventions and formal simplicity that offer a high-quality environment for educational processes on limited roof space.

LILA 2022 Special Mention in Schools and Playgrounds

Nanjing Forestry University

The jury recognized how the designers dealt with stormwater. Once the densely planted trees grow, a 'green cloud' will emerge to balance the architecture. A generous planting plan and loosened formal expression will act as an important improvement to this dense housing. The jury also appreciated the cultivated messiness and that avoided an overdetermined formal language. Rather, the site is organized as field of sloping planes with subtle armatures that shape the spaces and circulation. Notable is the elegant water line runs througout the project, not as a delimeter of space, but a means to explore the site by following the water's lead.

LILA 2022 Special Mention in Residential Landscapes

mavo Landschaften

The trail through the Flood Control Project in Arava valley is about curation and framing the intense power of flash flood events. A footpath guides visitors among strange features that arose from mitigating the force of seasonal waters, namely to protect a local road from being washed away. This surreal »beach« is surrounded by the eye-watering beauty of the Eilat and Edom Mountains. The main infrastructural element is water retention in an otherwise harsh desert with an extraordinary colour palette. The oddity of scale, shape and purpose of landscape structures, such as the tank-shaped soil landforms that were preserved during the excavations in order to sustain the acacia trees, appear inscrutable or at least utterly peculiar. Here the medium determines form, with varying scales of gravel, riprap and sediment shaping the landscape. This landscape infrastructure matches the sublime forces it is meant to contain. The team embraced all the curious spatial phenomena of retaining stormwater in a desert and collected them into a unique experience for the visitors.

LILA 2022 Special Mention in Infrastructure Projects

Flood control project, Arava valley, Eilat

YBM Yael Bar-Maor landscape architecture studio

Garden for the Bishop's House is a remarkable study in volcanic rock and the creation of ambiences with the use of vegetation and stone walls. The latter is used to emphasise the enclosed ambient and to add elements of surprise. In this small space, visitors can be immersed in the world of microcosmos, the structure of the volcanic rock where the surface has already started to change due to weather conditions and use. Carefully selected plants are starting to spread out, over and in between the dark stones, and moss is becoming a part of this beautiful pavement. Modest means were used to create this mesmerising garden. A bit like a meaningful haiku, Bishop's House garden will give you goosebumps in very few words.

The jury also appreciated the reference to Thomas Church, whose legendary Donnell Garden inspired the kidney-shaped pool. Beautifully alienated in colour, materiality, form and embedding a reference to another time, it appears as if the designers were intentionally dealing with the contradiction of the swimming pool rather than the swimming pool itself. A very mature and precise statement!

LILA 2022 Special Mention in Hospitality

Bishop’s House

The Landscape Studio

Marcel Tröger (Germany, 1991) is a young German landscape architect who already has several years of experiences of working in several landscape architecture offices. His work proves remarkable understanding of the changes and challenges happening to environement and consequently also our shifting perspectives. His projects are conscious of trans-scale complexities and spatial conditions, but also poetic and playful. His portfolio reflects a remarkably mature conceptual thinking meeting pure joy of designing.

LILA 2022 Winner of the Portfolio Award for Students and Young Professionals

Portfolio: Marcel Troeger

Farinoosh Hadian Jazy (Iran, 1996) is a Landscape architecture student (postgraduate) in UCL, Bartlett School of Architecture with Bachelors of Architecture. We recognize her ability to communicate graphically, her portfolio is full of interesting drawings that are somehow specific to the Bartlett school, but also unique and beautifully strange, approaching the intersection of illustration and data visualisation.

LILA 2022 Special Mention in the Portfolio Award for Students and Young Professionals

Portfolio: Farinoosh Hadian Jazy

The LILA Honour Award 2021 celebrates Snøhetta for its trans-disciplinary approach to the design process and specifically the ability to merge thinking about landscape and architecture. The results are often precious urban moments that host and inspire. Their designs appear as fitting consequences of advanced and multi-layered narratives.

From ancient myths to the latest cutting edge technology, Snøhetta's creations radiate a unique and always different blend of knowledge, craftsmanship, generosity and passion.

LILA 2021 Honour Award Winner

Snøhetta

The editors of Landezine were charmed by the portfolio of simple and well-thought-out spaces. But what made us fall for the office completely were their writings that reveal a liberating spirit and refreshing attitude behind their actions. TERREMOTO has the power to effortlessly challenge the old certainties and recipes our profession is based on. The result are spaces that are simply generous and look incredibly comfortable. This is everyday landscape architecture at its best. Every community needs a TERREMOTO. And our global professional community needs TERREMOTO even more – in their manifesto they write:
“TERREMOTO mines the omnipotence of intentional inexactitude, and flirts openly with illegibility. We strive, in many cases, to do as little as possible. We revere the history of landscape architecture, but also kind of want to destroy it.”
and:
“TERREMOTO believes that physical form is reason made visible, and thus philosophical subtexts and exploratory dialogues will eternally guide our work. Material daydreams, scientific walkabouts and the musical anarchy of horticulture, ecology, and art inform and inspire us.”
Epic! TERREMOTO 4ever!

LILA 2021 Office of the Year Winner

Terremoto

Whereas the project consists of various programmes, in essence, it is divided into a green part, where park-like structures meet the street and adjacent buildings. The outstanding part of it is a paved dike that protects the city from the river when it floods. The dike is entirely designed as an open public space, built of cobblestone. A playful folding of polygons ensures a vast open space and a unique landscape experience. In times of high waters, the visitors will be able to observe the flooding of the riverbank and the consequent frolics between the river and the newly established topography.

LILA 2021 Ex-Aequo Winner in Public Landscapes

Quays of the River Schelde, Sint-Andries en Zuid, Antwerp

Proap

The project is a poetic response to a palimpsest of natural and human-driven processes that shaped the site. One physical corpus was made by two different forces. The narrative states that the general perception of the artificial hill and the surrounding forest is a natural environment. They call it pseudo-nature.
Abstractly, it works because of the contrast between open and closed spaces, namely, an artificial forest with a forest ring and a clearing. The top of the hill is a small circular viewing platform made of polished concrete which references the geological structure of the moraine below the top of the hill. The viewing disc features fog-jets that produce an artificial cloud which acts as a poetic reference to flying, to being in the sky, to touching the sky. Entering the artificial cloud acts as a reference to moving through clouds when travelling by plane.
Beside the forest ring, the remaining forest area appears almost untouched, as it is under a nature conservation plan. Hence, maintenance is used as means of design. The project exposes many contradictions in our understanding of what is natural and what is artificial. It also provides a series of poetic ambiences and playful experiences on the hilltop.

LILA 2021 Ex-Aequo Winner in Public Landscapes

The Park, recreational area Butzenbüel at Zurich Airport

Robin Winogrond, Studio Vulkan

Arsenal Oasis is an experimental project that in deals with found objects, most visibly, with the phenomenon of a broken pipe that provides water. The surface is reshaped to invite water and makes the planting of trees possible. Because the debris is left in place, the process of change is visible and readable. This newfound and unique roughness reflects a relevant dialogue between what was, what is, and the suggestion of what ought to be. The project addresses wider spatial issues in Tbilisi and will hopefully act as a catalyst to spark positive change regarding neglected areas in the city.

LILA 2021 Winner of the Special Jury Award

Ruderal

LILA 2021 Winner in Infrastructure Projects

Area development Ooijen-Wanssum

H+N+S Landscape Architects

With its lush vegetation, Forest Garden approaches the site as hybridization between the ecosystem of plants, animals and humans. It is a delicate way of setting up clearings in the forest to take advantage of resources (productive gardens, natural pools, tree regeneration) without disturbing it. Studio Ome effectively used all topographical facts, existing plants, sunlight, and other natural forces to empower a variety of programmes, needs, and, above all, experiential richness. They obviously appreciate randomness and a more relaxed approach to planting. The decision to leave the paths in the garden as informal compacted earth paths, shows a humble approach to landscaping work, which the members of the jury felt demonstrated a truly sensitive understanding of providing 'just enough' to meet the brief. In essence, the project emphasizes how we can leave space for nature, which is an important message going forward. Forest Garden offers a wonderfully dense atmosphere and infinite possibilities for exploration and observation.

LILA 2021 Winner in Private Gardens

Forest garden, Nests house

Estudio Ome

Hylla Cloufall succeeds beautifully in creating a unique landscape on a roof. The design intent shows a more relaxed approach which our profession should be more aware of. They write: »the traditional buildings in Yunnan are also built with great freedom: the old craftsmen had no specific design for strict planning. They might suddenly pile a stone mill into the wall, and they didn’t care whether the edges and surfaces were properly handled … It’s all about randomness, imagination, and carelessness.«
The way the design uses a limited material pallet in different ways for different areas is remarkable. The jury also recognized its sense of craftsmanship, an approach that is always more sustainable than the ‘fast’ solutions that are detrimental to our planet.

LILA 2021 Winner in Hospitality

Hylla Cloudfall Nature Lounge

gad G+lab

As any engaging playscape, Brettspiel welcomes young and old it can be many things at once. As both open and abstract, it encourages young explorers to make up games and invent rules. At the same time, visitors can find themselves in previously undiscovered situations and interacting with each other in new ways.

LILA 2021 Winner in Schools and Playgrounds

Brettspiel (Board Game)

Sowatorini Landschaft

The power of this project lies in the rich sequence of diverse ambiences it presents within a highly contrasting and difficult existing conditions. The design approach is contemporary, yet references to a more traditional Chinese garden design are seamlessly interwoven into a new experience. Although the park seems detached from the residential buildings due to topographical constraints, it is placed alongside dense housing, offering residents easy access to quiet contemplative niches. With its strongly artificial appearance, it juxtaposes a rougher and more natural surrounding valley that had been damaged by a series of infrastructural interventions. The use of materials is impressive and works well with the various native plant choices – a more ‘foresty’ style outside the pavilion, and mosses within it. Offering such an experience is truly a generous gift to the residents.

LILA 2021 Winner in Residential Landscapes

Change Studio

The project questions the restoration of the exterior spaces of a campus that has suffered from the degradation of time and the roots of large banyan trees. The design explores several modalities of porosity and hybridity between the inert and the living.

LILA 2021 Winner in Campuses and Corporate Landscapes

Vale of Springs

ArchiBlur Lab, Studio ++, Wen ArtStudio

LILA 2021 Winner in Products

Terracota Planters

Domani

Motive Lighting product family is a versatile range of products that can be easily incorporated into different ambiences. The jury recognized its simplicity and sophistication.

LILA 2021 Winner in Products

Motive Lighting

Landscape Forms

The project comprises an extension of a cemetery built for the fallen soldiers of World War II, as well as other wars and missions of Dutch soldiers. The task was given to Karres en Brands who have already designed Nieuwe Ooster, a ground-breaking design that was influential some 15 years ago. Loenen may not be as innovative, yet it establishes a sequence of powerful atmosphere in an already beautiful context. Karres en Brands stated that they did not want to dominate the forest, but rather be a guest within it. Loenen cemetery is incredibly well-designed cemetery that spatial clarity and a peaceful setting for remembering or saying goodbye.

LILA 2021 Special Mention in Public Landscapes:

Loenen Memorial Cemetery Extension

Karres en Brands

Guangzhou Ecological Belt is an ambitious plan to protect the crucial environmental dynamics of a river system from rapid urbanisation. At the same time, it treats the already urbanised parts of rivers with a social sensibility, offering sequences of relevant and resilient spaces.

LILA 2021 Special Mention in Infrastructure Projects

Redefine Our Homeland – Guangzhou Ecological Belt Master Plan and Implementation

Guangzhou Urban Planning & Design Survey Research Institute

The experiential nature of this project is admirable with the sense of immersion within the wetland habitat it creates, which is also beneficial for the user from an educational perspective, allowing observation and appreciation of a wetland habitat close at hand. At eye level, this stormwater facility merges with the surrounding hills, offering an inviting experience for the local community and other passers-by.

LILA 2021 Special Mention in Infrastructure Projects

Dale Hodges Park

AECOM, O2 Planning + Design, Sans Facon for Watershed+

This post-industrial site deals with translating an old sugar factory into a user-friendly space that would at the same time reflect the previous spatial particularities. It is a very interesting response to questions about how abandoned structures can be redesigned and reused by visitors in this special milieu.

LILA 2021 Special Mention in Public Landscapes

ECG International Landscape Consultants

The outdoor spaces of Kalvebod Faelled School are an engaging and inviting environment for children. The project develops a design language to handle programme spaces around the building. The ‘intercellular’ concrete pavement encourages running and moving about. A convivial archipelago of different rooms produces a multi-faceted playscape, from prefabricated, manufactured equipment to vegetation and topography as more abstract means of play.

LILA 2021 Special Mention in Schools and Playgrounds

Kalvebod Fælled School

BOGL

Landezine team recognizes Berlin based landscape architecture and architecture office Topotek 1 as the winner of the LILA 2020 Office Award. The portfolio of Topotek 1 reflects a unique conceptual approach that is dedicated to solving social issues and practicing landscape architecture as a multilayered and creative cultural discipline. Besides their landscape projects, the editors of Landezine acknowledge their exhibition and book Creative Infidelities, which is a playful yet sober reflection on both their own work and landscape architecture as an open-ended design profession. A quote from Jorge Luis Borges featured in the exhibition perfectly illustrates Topotek 1’s approach to the notions of identity, honesty, and context in terms of landscape design: "The original is unfaithful to the translation".

LILA Office Award 2020 goes to Topotek 1 for their ability to design layered projects and above all for their refreshing and daring colorfulness in conceptual thinking, which the Landezine team would truly wish to see more of in landscape architecture offices around the world.

LILA 2020 Office of the Year Winner

Topotek 1

The Landezine team recognizes the work of Charles A. Birnbaum as an outstanding contribution to the global community of landscape architects. His work has been focused on advocating for the cultural value of landscape heritage in the US. In 1998, Birnbaum founded TCLF - The Cultural Landscape Foundation - which acts as a bridge between American cultural landscapes and the public. Through the various complex programmes and initiatives of TCLF, Birnbaum has shown an ambitious and innovative vision, executed with great precision, enthusiasm and perseverance.

The condition for the landscape architecture community to thrive in a society lies in an understanding of the work we do. Birnbaum has been continuously working on deepening this understanding and communicating the values of the American landscape heritage, both for the places and the people that shaped them.

LILA 2020 Honour Award Winner

Charles A. Birnbaum

Charles A. Birnbaum

This transformation of an airport into landscape works to balance the extreme climate, the design interlocks three scales: geographical, urban and local. The design meshes precisely formulated climatic and poetic goals in an inextricable way. The reflections of the office are at once complex and simple, of enormous depth, yet with childlike wonder. The design works well on all scales, from the park as a whole to a pedestrian perspective. The jury recognized the relaxed design language of the park that makes it look undetermined, as if it can change at any point. The design shows a powerful mix of a personal design language which doesn’t celebrate itself, but serves the adventures of the visitor through differentiated landscapes, climatic spaces and atmospheres.

LILA 2020 Winner in Public Landscapes

Phase Shifts Park

mosbach paysagistes

This on-going project was self-initiated by landscape architecture office EMF - Estudi Marti Franch - in the midst of the global financial crisis. The goal was to make it "big and cheap", so that the model can be repeated and adapted to many sites. It began by using vegetation maintenance to design public spaces in Girona. In this case, the landscape architect is not just the designer, but also a social catalyst who enables positive change. The jury recognized not only the process, but especially the result, which is a system of low-cost, modest, poetic and above all useful spaces that greatly enrich the quality of life for the people of Girona.

LILA 2020 Winner in Infrastructure Projects

Girona’s Shores

EMF

Folds works above all as sculpture-play-scape. While the design tools are simple, they offer a layered complexity within this simplicity, so as to cater for various uses. The play of shapes, levels and morphology makes it interesting to the various age groups of the nearby kindergarten as well as children from the area. The project is about the play between two materials which reflects geological processes that formed the Jura Mountains. In this way it establishes a unique and strong visual language and an engaging playground. On a larger scale it enriches the well-known modernist design approach of the surrounding residential area; the contrast between the orthogonal housing and more nature-inspired landscape forms.

LILA 2020 Winner in Schools and Playgrounds

Fold’s childhood

Gilles Brusset

The jury recognized a very different approach to the typology of residential landscape, where one would usually find very determined structures, designed to the very last square meter. Instead, Juul Frost Architects explored how a surrounding landscape can be brought into the residential area and how the buildings fit into the surrounding landscape. In the ‘inner’ area, small patches of what looks like local vegetation are placed in a very relaxed design language, emphasizing the qualities of the surrounding landscape and translating it excellently to a smaller scale.

LILA 2020 Winner in Residential Landscapes

Flyvestation Værløse

Juul Frost Architects

Using simple and graceful design language, the project succeeds in creating a new interpretation of local traditional craftsmanship and history. It is in the combination of strong spatial and material uses and detailing with fulfilling sustainable goals that sets the project apart.

LILA 2020 Winner in Hospitality

Landscape architecture for Terra Dominicata Hotel & winery

SCOB Architecture & Landscape

The jury recognized the tension and the atmospheric density that was achieved by well-known tools of garden design. The use of historic structures successfully establishes different ambiences and opens views that change the perception of the space, orientation and the scale of this relatively small plot. The garden was designed to catch changing seasons and light and synthesize them into a dramatic display of change. Ellipse garden is also a gardener's laboratory, and reflects the joy in cultivating, playing and experimenting with plants and their characteristics.

LILA 2020 Ex Aequo Winner in Private Gardens

Kjeld Slot Havearkitekt

The garden successfully builds on the relation between the surrounding landscape and the site. On one side of the house, it uses the approach of borrowed landscapes, establishing a connection between the garden and the pastorality of the adjacent agricultural land. On the other side of the plot it makes a clear differentiation, a contrast between the meadow and the lush woods. The garden also offers a sequence of various interesting ambiences.

LILA 2020 Ex Aequo Winner in Private Gardens

Anticipating the Landscape

Andrew van Egmond

The project text humbly tells of the team's aim to return the site to its rural integrity and local traditional building ways, away from the usual domination of design techniques. Yet the contemporary intervention succeeds in creating a strong independent design expression which successfully augments and strengthens the beauty of the site itself. The structures and plantings merge in creating densely atmospheric spaces.

LILA 2020 Special Mention in Hospitality category

Cloud of Hometown Landscape Design

gad · line+ studio

As a part of a larger planning scheme for reducing traffic, Ballerup Boulevard provides a pilot project for transforming our car-oriented, oversized streets into multi-functional transit ways with human scale and character. The charming yet straight-forward design language of path geometries and planting beds allows the user to move through a coherent whole and at the same time differentiates sequence of spaces. Over time the plantings will create a lush, dense green corridor.

LILA 2020 Special Mention in Infrastructure Projects

Ballerup Boulevard

Marianne Levinsen Landskab

The structure was established as a landmark, social magnet, a site part of, yet distinct from, landscape. Its intervention is a sensitive, precise study of village imagery, social life, as well as the movement through a broader landscape. It enhances village life on multiple levels while creating a gentle, internal world for women in a society where women’s public facilities are almost non-existent. The humbleness with which usual goals of public space are achieved is emphasized through the rawness and simplicity of means, such as reordering stones found on site, choreographed view corridors through a seemingly naive window, a fireplace or a simple swing in the courtyard. Ecologically, within the harsh landscape conditions, small means are used to gather rare sources of soil, water and shade, creating biodiversity, reforestation, and the climatic improvement of shade. The simultaneity of a public space with the intimacy, and almost fragility of such a needed meeting point has created a strong, unique sense of place.

LILA 2020 Special Mention in Public Landscapes

Lifting The Palm Grove To a Higher Level

Building Beyond Borders

Although the tiny district of Yongqing Fang still contains historical remnants, their small number limits the possibilities for a strong experience. The streetscapes successfully strengthen this quarter with a series of sensitive, highly poetic and well-measured interventions. Throwing away classical categories of old and new and the usual need to contrast these, the design playfully combines new interpretations of building techniques and materials to create a moving and powerful sense of contemporary, historic place.

LILA 2020 Special Mention in Public Landscapes

Yongqing Fang Alleyways – An Urban Transformation

Lab D+H

The jury recognized the approach of embracing time to make a comfortable living space. The project successfully combines soil reactivation, food production, water management and recycling of the material found on site. This simplistic, smart and visually interesting landscape reaches beyond what is expected of a residential area.

LILA 2020 Special Mention in Residential Landscapes

Emma Blanc

The work of Michael van Gessel (b. 1948) spans over several decades and is comprised of landscape architecture, urban planning, and supervision of large scale developments. After his studies at Wageningen University in 1978, he was employed in Bureau B+B for 18 years, the last seven as its director. He presided over many juries, among others for the Rosa Barba Prize and Landscape Architecture Europe editions. He retired in 2015 and lives in Amsterdam.

His landscape projects are all about silent change. In his book Invisible Work, van Gessel states his objective is to design spaces in a way that they feel as if they've been there since always. While his approach is about mastering restraint and subtle creativity, he was never afraid to chop down some trees in order to make the view. His works are precise, subtle, minimal, timeless, but at the same time bold, playful and always interesting!

His approach is the perfect antidote to formalism and to projects wanting too much. His body of work is a library many can learn from now and in the times to come.

LILA 2019 Honour Award Winner

Michael van Gessel

Studio Vulkan is a Zürich based landscape architecture practice. They are not bound to finding a formula for their projects, but rather seem to be more interested in re-questioning everything a project might bring: context, ambience and all available tools for solving problems and making an experience. They are not committed to finding a style, although there is a notion of 'relaxed aesthetics' present in most of their projects that is well-anchored in the project narrative.

Toni Areal, for example, is a roof garden, an urban oasis that uses only time to make itself more defined by natural forces, and one in particular - decay. Exposing the beauty of decay, or decay itself, is still a taboo across our profession; oddly enough, in an age when nature is in focus. Similarly, Park Naturmuseum St. Gallen is dealing with 'artificial naturalness'. It aims to question the occurrence of nature in an entirely artificial/urban context. Studio Vulkan seem to enjoy introducing intentional imperfections, knowing that in this way, their works are far more interesting. For Park Naturmuseum they wrote in the project narrative: "In addition to the predominantly native plants, exotic hydrangeas stand for the paradox of the place."

In times, when our profession still produces a monoculture of ideas resulting in sameness, Studio Vulkan is showing the way to keep landscape architecture interesting. Their work provokes an endless curiosity while also featuring a catalogue of solutions to a range of relevant issues.

LILA 2019 Office of the Year Winner

Studio Vulkan

The project Objets Trouvés convinces with outstanding artistic quality and visible historical awareness. Moving the bunker from its ancestral place and letting it re-appear in a new one is both astonishing and effective. This blunt dislocation, which first reacts to infrastructural requirements and finally turns the bunker into a ready-made, creates a whole new quality of visual perception. It is in this aesthetic space of resonance, where contemporary infrastructure development ultimately becomes conceivable as a possible instalment of the European warfare history. Consequently, the actual traces of history are kept visible with a genuine purpose – although this required such an action as moving a bunker. As a bold and even radical gesture, the project inscribes itself in the infusible tension between past, present, and future on the one hand, and between absence and presence on the other. In doing so, it formulates a notable reference point for the contemporary discipline of landscape architecture as an artistically informed cultural practice.

LILA 2019 Ex-Aequo Winner in Public Landscapes

Objets Trouvés

Bureau B+B Urbanism and Landscape Architecture, H+N+S Landscape Architects

A beautiful and extremely subtle design, Scenic Path is a gesture drawn so as to offer a discovery of 'what is already there' and 'what has been there' a long time ago. A clever, precise design of a path, with a sophisticated geometrical set of shifting positions, where platforms, seats or walls organize the views far away, and with the same movements build a very strong sense of place. The materiality of the realization continues and reinforces the design with a great coherence, forming this precise architectonic play with a restrained number of materials. A presence arises – a collision of space and time - and you experience a landscape at the same time very old and very new.

LILA 2019 Ex-Aequo Winner in Public Landscapes

Scenic Path Along Igualada’s Old Gypsum Mines

Batlleiroig Arquitectura

The Noordwaard project is a new 4450-hectare flow area that will prepare The Netherlands for the rising waters in the 'Room for The River' project. With its 12 pumping stations, hydraulic structures, and a large number of bridges, it is a bold but also humble design that respects the water landscape. The bridges have many different functions such as dikes, resting areas for birds, and introduces water in a spectacular way. They also facilitate public access and provide new opportunities for recreation in the de-poldered area. This is a clear statement that design matters because it adds value for people, birds, and water landscape.

LILA 2019 Winner in Infrastructure Projects

ipv Delft, West 8

Coteau Saint Barbe is a smart and beautiful 'stitch' of the urban and the natural. It offers the link between the two and also effectively uses water dynamics from higher up the slope. With a simple gesture it adds an immense value to the living outdoors at Coteau Saint Barbe.

LILA 2019 Winner in Residential Landscapes

Coteau Saint Barbe

Studio Basta

Often landscape designs for hotels and resorts are too full of everything and enclosed, gated, disconnected from the outside world. There is a pressure that landscape needs to be perfect all the time. The Hospitality award was introduced to promote a project that can welcome visitors, tourists, and temporary residents differently. ‘Clouds’ establish the experience not by looking into its own created pocket arcadia, but by absorbing and framing the surroundings. It creates a space of confrontation between visitors and landscape.

LILA 2019 Winner in Hospitality

Clouds – Vanke Art & Aesthetic Center

Change Studio

If we can say that a private garden is an experimental place for domestic life, Rooted in Clay is just that. As the name suggests, the project is about taming a very dynamic topological context and at the same time keeping the feeling of the place wild. Considering the ordinary Canadian suburb, this garden is a surprise. Furthermore, the project reuses city’s leftovers, mainly wooden slabs. Rooted in Clay is about engineering, recycling, and, above all, experience. It accomplishes its goals effectively and gracefully through a sequence of shifting situations. Nature is an ambiguous term, but in a context of suburban residential gardens full of order, Rooted in Clay introduces a relaxed, more natural atmosphere. As such it is a poetic statement and a convivial critique.

LILA 2019 Winner in Private Gardens

ROOTED IN CLAY _ WY Garden Winnipeg

Straub Thurmayr

Sonoma Mountain Garden represents a rigorous approach to minimalist landscape architecture that has a strong collaborative dialogue with the architecture. The garden’s material pallet is contextual, as it pulls in the surrounding landscape through its use of textures, forms and colors. The strong and clearly human-made geometrical patterns offer a complement to the surrounding landscape through contrast. Each space and corridor within the garden are well scaled and present a well-crafted and eloquent suite of details and materials that offer the user a quiet and contemplative landscape that will bring friends and family together.

LILA 2019 Special Mention in Gardens

Sonoma Mountain

Hocker Design Group

Køge Kyst poses a question on how to design residential landscape on the beach. The design brings the sand and grasses to the buildings' doorsteps, offering a mesmerizing and unique experience.

LILA 2019 Special Mention in Residential Landscapes

Juul Frost Architects

The Prins Hendrikzanddijk deals with a dynamic landscape system – a waterfront that faces rising and unpredictable waters. They introduce a dialogue with the native forces, involving them in the emergence of the 'islands’. The project addresses the interaction between liquid and solid, the still and the moving. It invites biodiversity, offers a beautiful space for recreation and, most of all, excellently illustrates an alternative way of design by working with time, instead of working against it.

LILA 2019 Special Mention in Infrastructure Projects

Prins Hendrikzanddijk

Feddes Olthof

Jury members recognized Catherine Mosbach as an outstanding and talented creative force who pushes the profession beyond excellence, revealing hidden layers of designing and also thinking about landscape. The result is a portfolio of unique and strong conceptual works. They remind us that there will always be infinite opportunities to find and express an original personal vocation whilst practicing environmentally and socially responsible work.

LILA 2018 Office of the Year Winner

mosbach paysagistes

mosbach paysagistes

The project answers questions related to reintroducing nature into artificial landscape and dealing with landscape in rural-urban fringes. It reactivates the old river channel for visitors, masterfully combining new modest elements and simple structures into a powerful experience. The most poetic element is the grid of sand - a platform for the river - a natural force that expresses itself through decomposition. Designed as a ruin, the project is the process; full of play between the grid and the river, man and nature. Renaturalisation is not brought in by force; it occurs. One can imagine the river entering the grid for the first time, like an animal released from captivity, figuring out which way to go and where to settle. The power of this work lies in its honesty, taking us to a much deeper thinking about the relation between man and nature in the age of the Anthropocene.

LILA 2018 Winner in Public Landscapes

Renaturation of the river Aire, Geneva

Atelier Descombes Rampini, Group Superpositions

Jury members acknowledged this garden as an outstanding way of bringing residents to nature, due to its simplicity and the way it allows for exploration. An ordinary site was curated and transformed by Coen+Partners into a dramatic landscape comprising various ambiences with a unique character. The jury noticed the presentation of the project, focusing away from the house into the garden as the place of dwelling and coexisting with the site.

LILA 2018 Winner in Private Gardens

Lake Marion Private Retreat

Coen+Partners

LILA 2018 Public Choice Office of the Year

The Landscape Studio

The Landscape Studio

LILA 2018 Public Choice Award for Private Gardens

Shma Company Limited

LILA 2018 Public Choice Award for Products

Escofet 1886

This intervention raises the question of what ‘garden’ is and what it represents. Salaam house is a ‘hard-core’ landscape architecture project sending a message that with subtle approach, simplicity and a modest budget we can create a garden by maintaining and appreciating what we already have.

LILA 2018 Special Mention in Private Garden

The Landscape Studio

Strelka KB is not a classical design office, but a bridge between Russian society and the global design profession. They stand out due to their role as facilitator, initiator and project driver. They do not claim to be design experts. but help make projects reality through their local expertise, willingness to navigate through the local environment, and a desire to change things. Strelka KB is not defined by a unitary design vision but by a collective of hundreds of young professionals hungry to transform their city and country. In doing so they have managed to affect change to an extent never before seen in the design profession.

LILA 2018 Special Mention in the Office Category

Strelka KB

H+N+S has through an engineering approach successfully developed large scale thinking about landscape, integrating aspects concerning energy, environment, well-being and aesthetics. They feature a consistent opus of brave interventions in landscape, often with ingenious and innovative solutions. H+N+S is a relevant force in our common task to find and develop new tools for overcoming the challenges concerning landscape today and in the future.

LILA 2017 Office of the Year Winner

H+N+S Landscape Architects

H+N+S Landscape Architects

Saint Ouen – Park at The Docks is a complex landscape system that offers optimistic answers to questions concerning social equity and water resilience. Agence Ter demonstrated excellent skills to design a multifunctional, generous and inclusive social platform that offers various uses (including growing food). At the same time, it works as a sponge, providing space for water during heavy rains and floods. Jury members agreed passionately that this project will send the right message to the professional community on how to design liveable urban spaces for the future as well as to everyone else on how we should all be able to use open spaces in the times ahead of us.

LILA 2017 Winner in Public Landscapes

Saint Ouen – Park of the docks

Agence Ter

LILA 2017 Office of the Year Public Choice Winner

OMGEVING

LILA 2017 Public Choice Award for Public Landscapes

Nørreport Station, Copenhagen

Bartenbach lighting design, Cobe, Gottlieb Paludan Architects

LILA 2017 Public Choice Award for Products

AREA

In terms of aesthetics, jury members recognized The Dialogue Center Przelomy (KWK Promes) as a strikingly beautiful landmark and a generous urban public landscape.

LILA 2017 Special Mention in Public Landscapes

Dialogue Centre Przelomy

KWK Promes

The jury members also acknowledge Chicago Riverwalk (SASAKI + Ross Barney) as a high-quality urban space, extremely well structured and built. The new horizontal layer in the birthplace of the skyscraper will certainly have a positive impact and will transform the city into a more liveable and pedestrian-friendly urban environment.

LILA 2017 Special Mention in Public Landscapes

Chicago Riverwalk Expansion

Sasaki

Park am Gleisdreieck (Atelier LOIDL) was also debated as one of the most effortlessly beautiful and comfortable projects. Placed four meters above the city level, Gleisdreieck is an urban oasis and a vital link between neighbourhoods, featuring smart interventions, such as a(?) placing programme under the bridge, revealing layers from the site’s past uses and exposing the contrast between soft park tissue and S-Bahn trains buzzing over the main meadow on the elevated rail-yards. One jury member commented: “It’s so Berlin!”

LILA 2017 Special Mention in Public Landscapes

Park am Gleisdreieck

Atelier LOIDL

In terms of bridging regenerative infrastructure and public landscapes, the jury also acknowledges SCAPE studio from NYC. SCAPE combines research and practice to conquer cross-scale spatial challenges, whilst blurring the lines between neighbourhoods and habitats.

LILA 2017 Special Mention in the Office Category

SCAPE

Agence Ter stood out for their ‘motion and evolution’. Motion, for entering unchartered territories and solving problems from multiple directions, and evolution, for constantly responding to changing demands concerning climate change and social issues. With this approach, Agence Ter designs unique, smart and convivial landscapes.

LILA 2017 Special Mention in the Office Category

Agence Ter

Members of the jury recognized SLA from Denmark as an office that demonstrates the ability and adaptability to successfully design a wide scope of different tasks. They developed an effective approach to bringing nature into the urban environment, whilst working with its processes in cities, especially dealing with large quantities of water.

LILA 2017 Special Mention in the Office Category

SLA

Marti Franch is in his projects not only successfully solving spatial, environmental and physical problems concerning the sites he works on but with very respectful interventions manages to nurture landscape architecture also as a cultural discipline. His landscapes offer educational and experiential richness, often in fragile environments.

EMF designed landscapes are a result of a curious design approach that emphasises the curiosity also in the visitor by leaving landscape features and stories hidden enough to be discovered rather than just put on display. The narrative in Cap de Creus projects awaits the user in suggestion and not in the direct message. This way the user interacts with the meaning, making the experience far more intense and memorable.

La Tancada Salt Fields and Cap de Creus, are blending ecology, natural and cultural memory into harmonious and at the same time very powerful experience. The grounds of Can Framis museum illustrate EMF’s ability to intervene in dense urban fabric. A green, almost forest like ambience in the middle of Barcelona, again with a direct connection to the site’s past and ecological measures for cooling down the site with dense planting.

With Les Echasses project Marti Franch is effectively using natural processes to create a lake for a nature like resort. Instead of just creating a lake the landscape is proposed that first creates natural conditions for a lake to take place as a consequence.

EMF is practicing excellent scientific and technical work, but most importantly also proves well manifested paradigm that visiting landscapes must mean a culturally fulfilling experience. In the times when ecosystems are constantly being challenged by the consequences of human activity preservation and restoration of nature are vital for the wellbeing of all species. Marti Franch is aware that promoting subtle change in order to emphasise overwhelming natural forces and features left ‘as they are’ in nature plays a very important role in establishing a bond between the user and the landscape – people and environment.

LILA 2016 Office of the Year Winner

EMF – Estudi Marti Franch

EMF

Felixx is a young office for proactive landscape architecture, founded by Michiel Van Driessche, Deborah Lambert and Marnix Vink. The office designs public spaces, works on urban development plans, engineers landscape transformation strategies, and is involved in spatial research projects.

LILA 2016 Office of the Year Public Choice Winner

Felixx

LILA 2023 Sponsor

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