Student news

Congratulations to PhD student in Landscape Architecture, Nubras Samayeen, who won 1st prize in the Graduate College 2024 Image of Research Competition!

The spring's march newsletter by the head of the Department of Landscape Architecture, David L. Hays, updates alumni and friends on current activities within the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign's Landscape Architecture department. It covers the midterms, students' project work during spring break, and highlights recent events such as the 2024 All-Department Charrette focused on climate resilience. The newsletter also celebrates achievements and recognitions of department members, including alumni and faculty. Additionally, it announces upcoming events like the CELA 2024 Annual Conference in St. Louis.

Congratulations to PhD in Landscape Architecture candidate Nubras Samayeen, who successfully defended her dissertation, “Architecture of the Land”: Louis I. Kahn’s National Assembly Complex in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and the Construction of a National Identity," at the end of last week. Nubras’s doctoral committee members include Prof. D. Fairchild Ruggles (Landscape Architecture), serving as chair, along with Prof. Pollyanna Rhee (Landscape Architecture), Prof. Cameron McCarthy (Education Policy, Organization, and Leadership), Prof. John Stallmeyer (Architecture), and Prof. Hasan-Uddin Kahn (Architecture and Historic Preservation, Roger Williams University).

Congratulations to PhD in Landscape Architecture candidate Alexandre Champagne, who successfully defended his dissertation, “Mobilizing Landscape Architecture against Urban Precarity: Framing an Applied-Philosophy Approach through the Works of Henri Maldiney, Paul Ricœur, and Jacques Rancière,” earlier this week. Alexandre’s doctoral committee members include Prof. Elen Deming (Landscape Architecture), Prof. Brenda Farnell (Anthropology), Prof. Jennifer Monson (Dance and Landscape Architecture), and Prof. Deni Ruggeri (Landscape Architecture, Univ. of Maryland), with Prof. David Hays (Landscape Architecture) serving as chair. Last September, Alexandre began a full-time appointment on the faculty of Landscape Architecture at Boston Architectural College.

Salcedo is the national undergraduate winner of the 2023 Fountain Scholarship, a prestigious award granted by the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture (CELA). She received the award during a ceremony at the CELA Annual Conference in San Antonio, TX.

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.

Students in our undergrad Regional Design Studio partnered with the City of Whiting, IN, and the USDA Forest Service to design plans for foresting vacant lots. So far, two have been planted, with more to come.

Three members of our department community—faculty member Kelley Lemon, current student Ana Valderrama, and alum Sonal Mithal—have been awarded prestigious grants from the Graham Foundation.

The Department of Landscape Architecture is pleased to announce the establishment of the Sofia T. Soudavanh Garden on an area of ground adjacent to our building, Temple Buell Hall.

Prof. Kelley Lemon and PhD in Landscape Architecture alumnus Dongying Li are two of the twelve faculty Research Fellows selected to study high-performing landscape projects in the Landscape Architecture Foundation’s 2022 Case Study Investigation program.

Launched in 2007 and renewed in 2019, the Red Oak Rain Garden is a magical place on our campus—even in middle of winter—to which many members of our Department of Landscape Architecture community have contributed over time—as designers, installers, maintainers, and financial supporters.

An essay by PhD in Landscape Architecture candidate Nubras Samayeen has been published as a chapter in the book Film, Media, and Representation in Postcolonial South Asia: Beyond Partition (Routledge, 2021).

LA+CREATURE—the third in the LA+ international design ideas competition series—asked how we can use design to open our cities, our landscapes, and our minds to a more symbiotic existence with other creatures.

This year, our 2020 Sasaki Day Awards competition took place entirely online—from submissions and first-round judging to finalist presentations and voting—with participants distributed across the country and beyond.

An essay by PhD candidate Nubras Samayeen, “A Tale Of Two Cities: Dhaka’s Urban Imaginary in the Twenty-First Century,” has been published as a chapter in a new book: Spaces of New Colonialism: Reading Schools, Museums, and Cities in the Tumult of Globalization (Peter Lang, 2020).

A team of 13 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign students recently won an American Society of Landscape Architects award.

Senior BLA student Amber Sims recently gave a presentation titled “Black Travel” at the new Bruce D. Nesbitt African American Cultural Center.