Winning landscape architecture designs highlight community needs

In the Fall of 2008, Assistant Professor Roberto Rovira asked his design studio class to create a Center for Land Use Interpretation to integrate the natural and built environment along the Miami-Everglades boundary line, an often contested and ecologically rich area. The design class pushes students to explore creative ideas within a real-world context, and often is fertile ground for competition-worthy designs to percolate.

In 2009, FIU graduate Brennan Baxley’s “Ephemeral Boundaries” design proved to be nothing short of great. Baxley, with the guidance of Rovira, won the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) most coveted award—the 2010 General Design Honor Award, out of a record 618 submissions from 20 countries.

“Baxley’s solution was sophisticated and layered, and emerged from a very thorough design process,” Rovira said.

“In his project, the transition across the site’s boundaries takes place through subtle shifts. Paths reach out from each elevation, making fragile and ephemeral extensions that leech out across the landscape and become absorbed by it. These transitions happen across various elevations, and boardwalks and paths provide a variety of experiences that vary from complete enclosure to vast openness, replicating the condition of a city absorbed by an ecosystem and an ecosystem absorbed by a city.”

And while the students’ designs rarely get built, Rovira is committed to making sure that these works are shared. To him, they represent a “system of ideas” that allows people to see how an idea evolved, and “that dialogue is incredibly valuable.” It is a recipe to anticipate real-life community needs and properly manage growth and development.

“So even though these projects may not necessarily be built,” said Rovira, “they guide the conversation, help anticipate the needs of our community, envision how development can happen, and eventually influence how it happens. And the awards are a great way to do this.”

Baxley’s design also was featured in the September 2010 issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine, where his project was described by the jury as “a great combination of modeling and presentation.”

“Because I see and am personally interested in that struggle between the built and the natural, between those tensions of development, I think at those edges are where our toughest questions need to be addressed,” Rovira said. “And if we are able to create scenarios in which we use all of our creativity, innovative potential and intellect to picture how this can be done, not because it is reactionary or have no other choice, then it behooves us to look at where development can happen and envision how it can happen well.”

“In a state where the Everglades and conservation are critical to the betterment of our entire South Florida community, Dr. Rovira’s class is producing results that can ultimately protect the delicate balance between biodiversity and human interaction,” said FIU Provost and Executive Vice President Douglas Wartzok.

View Brennan Baxley’s winning project here.

— Aimee Dingwell