ASLA's 2011 Best Residential Landscapes
Each year, the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) awards professional awards to the year's best residential landscape designs. We have all eight winners from the 2011 competition, with entries ranging from a renovation of Philip Johnson's Beck House in Dallas to a cascade of terraces for a New York City apartment.
With its annual professional awards, the American Society of Landscape Architects puts a bright and prestigious spotlight on groundbreaking garden design. The winners here demonstrate how great designers can bring beauty and sustainability—as well as serenity and functionality—to sites large and small, urban and wild, damaged or pristine.—Bill Marken
To read our full article about the winners, pick up a copy of our November/December 2011 issue, now on newsstands. And for more information about the winners, visit the ASLA's website.
All captions from ASLA and the project winners.
Left: ASLA Award Winner Snake River Residence by Design Workshop, Inc.
Jackson Hole, WY
The reflecting pool appears to drop magically off the terrace into the cottonwood forest. The use of indigenous meadow plants such as little bluestem, combined with native trees and shrubs, helps the designed landscape blend with the exiting natural place.
ASLA Award Winner Snake River Residence by Design Workshop, Inc.
Jackson Hole, WY
A slice of modernism in a rustic environment, Snake River Retreat challenges the notion of contemporary design in a rugged landscape. Respect for the natural landscape is evident through the ecological restoration of over a half-mile of the site’s once-damaged hydrological systems, encouraging the owners and guests to be outside and addressing metrics of water quality, vegetative coverage and habitat growth. A multi-layered tapestry of riparian and native species reestablishes the landscape to pre-disturbed conditions.
Left: The terrace, recessed below the finished floor of the residence, disappears into a meadow of alpine lupine. The meadow was created by carefully thinning existing cottonwood sapling to suggest a drier and broader environment reminiscent of an open mountain meadow.
ASLA Award Winner Snake River Residence by Design Workshop, Inc.
Jackson Hole, WY
The existing site, hard-packed and impenetrable river cobble discouraged vegetation growth. After studying naturally appearing patterns along Spring Creek, the team implemented layers of trees, shrubs, wetland grasses, willows, forbs, sedges and rushes to prevent future soil erosion.
ASLA Award Winner Snake River Residence by Design Workshop
A stone and hand-seeded path links the arrival court with the home’s entry. On either side, planting areas are formally organized with materials that complement the native landscapes. Textures and colors are segmented, yet the materials are earthy and malleable.
ASLA Award Winner Carnegie Hill House by Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape
New York City
Four gardens created in a constricted urban context provide a sanctuary to parents raising their children, pollinators and birds raising their young. This analogy to the ‘nest’ provides an immersive learning experience in predominantly native plants connecting the owner to four seasons and an awareness of other species and their needs in an urban environment: water, habitat, and forage. Details in planters, paving, and furnishings draw inspiration from woven assemblage to reinforce this analogy of stewardship.
Left: The greenwall on the 6th floor was conceived as artwork. Bounded by a teak frame, lush plants thrive above the children’s sandbox. Herbs and other edibles, such as strawberries, are planted just within the children’s reach.
ASLA Award Winner Carnegie Hill House by Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape
New York City
A view of the first floor garden reading nook from the upper terraces reveals a texturally rich and diverse material palette.
ASLA Award Winner Carnegie Hill House by Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape
New York City
Native greases, fragrant perennials, and a row of river birch trees provide a sense of enclosure at the uppermost terrace on the 7th floor. The paving pattern reflects the pattern of the roof tile on the adjacent church.
ASLA Award Winner Galisteo Modern by Design Workshop North Central, New Mexico
Driven by modernist design ethos of simplicity, volume and natural materials, the landscape architecture of Galisteo Modern successfully transitions a modern architectural masterpiece into its surrounding context through poetic yet restrained interventions. Because the immediate landscape is so dominant and visually spectacular, the design is both respectful of and scaled appropriately to its environment, protecting the site’s visual quality and environmental significance. Natural processes are encouraged through the reconstruction of the sensitive Galisteo Basin ecosystem.
Left: Designers employed the concept of prospect in the interlaced interior and exterior spaces that gives way to views of the prairie. At the center, a courtyard pool and gardens offer a calming sanctuary that aligns imperceptibly with the western horizon.
ASLA Award Winner Galisteo Modern by Design Workshop
North Central, New Mexico
Designers employed the concept of prospect in the interlaced interior and exterior spaces that gives way to views of the prairie. At the center, a courtyard pool and gardens offer a calming sanctuary that aligns imperceptibly with the western horizon.
ASLA Award Winner Peninsula Residence by Andrea Cochran Landscape Architecture
Hillsborough, CA
Situated on a suburban street, the Peninsula Residence aims to create an alternative model for the standard front yard—one that is appropriate to neighborhood and the Northern California climate. The landscape design re-imagines a previously neglected slope to implement sustainable materials and an interconnected spatial relationship between public and private zones. This project exemplifies how the innovative reconfiguration of an entry can create a place that engages a home, a street, and the senses.
Left: The entry sequence orchestrates a meandering approach. Cor-ten walls are carefully sited with pier foundations to minimize oak root disturbance.
ASLA Award Winner Salame Residence by Vladimir Djurovic Landscape Architecture
Beirut, Lebanon
On a steep and challenging site, a peaceful sanctuary away from the hustle and bustle of city life was required. In two small and precise gestures, the landscape intervention creates a safe and holistic environment for celebrating essential blissful moments.
Main terrace set for soaking blissful moments of contemplation.
ASLA Award Winner Salame Residence by Vladimir Djurovic Landscape Architecture
Beirut, Lebanon
Front garden floating on water.
ASLA Award Winner Salame Residence by Vladimir Djurovic Landscape Architecture
Beirut, Lebanon
Access to the horizon pool.
ASLA Award Winner A Farm at Little Compton by Michael Vergason Landscape Architects
Little Compton, RI
This family farm straddles a ridge-lined peninsula facing the Atlantic Ocean on the southern coast of Rhode Island. Bounded by water and set within the Sakonnet landscape of coastal field, forest, pond, and meadow, this property quietly embodies a modest agrarian character while preserving critical habitat for endangered shorebirds, coastal plants and wildlife. The Master Plan uses an existing road and walls as a skeletal structure which organizes the insertion of a series of three building compounds into the matrix of windswept coastal fields. The project artfully integrates a network of restrained architectural and landscape interventions with the existing fabric, creating a lucid landscape structure and illuminating the peninsula's striking beauty.
Nighttime view of the Head House and barn showing the accretion of old and new buildings and the comfortable proportion of outdoor rooms created between them.
ASLA Award Winner A Farm at Little Compton by Michael Vergason Landscape Architects
Little Compton, RI
A matrix of 'farmer stack' stone walls frame the new Head House and informal grass parking court.
ASLA Award Winner A Farm at Little Compton by Michael Vergason Landscape Architects
Little Compton, RI
View to ocean across grazing field layered by restored stonewalls and managed hedgerows. Rain chains carry roof drainage to fern beds at building base.
ASLA Award Winner Salame Residence by Reed Hilderbrand
Dallas
Philip Johnson's monumental 1964 Beck House was conceived as a theatrical viewing platform for the surrounding landscape—a motive pursued more simply and elegantly in Johnson's own Glass House fifteen years earlier. The Beck House renovation, completed in 2009, critically revises this modernist paradigm. By deftly altering Johnson's conceptual break-line between building and landscape, the project demonstrates landscape architecture's capacity to integrate the conservation of the material legacy of a project with direct engagement of the visual, spatial, ecological, and domestic characteristics of the site.
Left: Pool pavilion and terrace among preserved cedar elm canopy.
ASLA Award Winner Salame Residence by Reed Hilderbrand
Dallas
Pathway from the main entry to the private family entry.
ASLA Award Winner Salame Residence by Reed Hilderbrand
Dallas
Stabilized bank planting and shallow steps in place of tall walls allow Bachman Creek to flood without erosion or damage to the site.
ASLA Award Winner Half-Mile, Hand-Built Line: Berkshire Boardwalk by Reed Hilderbrand
Stockbridge, MA
The owners of this new 2,700 foot-long boardwalk describe the work as "a remarkable discovery" of a place that was previously unreachable and unknowable. Threading a narrow path through the edge of a 50-acre wetland adjacent to their home, a team of carpenters assembled the boardwalk completely by hand, in the water, without machines. The result has been deemed a successful habitat enhancement and an exemplary permitting precedent for the town. For the owners it is a lasting and unforgettable experience in all seasons.
Aerial photograph of the boardwalk in fall
ASLA Award Winner Half-Mile, Hand-Built Line: Berkshire Boardwalk by Reed Hilderbrand
Stockbridge, MA
Passage through a dense thicket approaching the open wetland.
