Resilience

The 2026 All Department Charrette has come to an end. This year's event successfully bridged the gap between academic theory and professional practice, focusing on the future of the university's own landscape. Students from all levels, from freshmen to ph. D. candidates, worked in vertical teams, fostering a unique mentorship environment between the BLA and MLA programs. This year's team was guided by six distinguished practitioners from GGN, Scott Byro & Co., and Tgda, providing students with direct access to industry leaders. The team pivoted from community-adjacent sites to focus on internal campus priorities, specifically the 2022 campus landscape master plan and the rainwater management program.  

Prof. Kelley Lemon has been awarded a $100,000 grant through the Chancellor’s Call to Action Initiative, a commitment by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to focus the intellectual and scholarly talent of our university on two of the greatest challenges facing our society—racism and social injustice—and to seek new solutions. The Call to Action to Address Racism & Social Injustice Research Program provides support for academic research and the expansion of community-based knowledge that advances the understanding of systemic racism and generationally embedded racial disparity.

As Founding Director of the practice Matéricos Periféricos, Ph.D. student Ana Valderrama (MLA, Illinois, 2009) and her collaborators have received a 2022 Inclusion Award from the New York City Architecture Biennial. Their project, "Industrial District," includes a series of practices and two buildings co-constructed with the communities they serve.

In this online lecture, O’Shea will discuss recent projects by his practice, Hinterlands, that exemplify the firm’s commitment to radically rethinking the contemporary urban realm through the medium of landscape.

Led by Prof. Mary Pat McGuire, the initiative is part of a growing movement to transform underused paved areas, such as empty parking lots, into vibrant, green, community spaces.