USC Landscape Architecture Community

Two members of our MLA+U community were awarded honorable mentions in the inaugural Lewis McAdams Prize by the LA River Public Art Project (three prizes were announced: first prize and the two honorable mentions). Linpei Cheng MLA ’20 was awarded for Concrete Water and MLA candidate Jared McKnight (2021) was awarded for Canoga Park Public Art Destination. Congratulations Linpei and Jared! @jared_mcknight @linclinclink @lariverpublicartproject @uscarchitecture #lewismacadamsprize #lariver #artcompetition #publicart #landscapearchitecture

Please join us on Wednesday, July 22nd and Wednesday July 29th from 6-7pm PDT for a series of USC MLA+U Alumni Flash Talks featuring alumni from the last 10 years of the Master of Landscape Architecture and Urbanism program. Alumni include those in the public and private sectors doing a wide range of work. We launch these talks with the hope of starting conversations between students, alumni, and broader networks to stay connected in these disconnected times! Contact [email protected] for the Zoom link.

Join us starting this Thursday for a casual virtual talk series by faculty. For the zoom link, please inquire with [email protected]. Director Alison Hirsch will be starting by revisiting work she did with MLA+U students on the spatial legacies of the 1992 uprisings for racial justice in Los Angeles.

Tune in tomorrow to Aroussiak’s panel on ‘The Absurd as a Radical Space for Social Inquiry’ at the annual RadicalxChange conference: https://www.radicalxchange.org. The panel is described: ‘Absurdist acts offer experiences that provoke, that speculate, that undermine known values and authorities, that point and prod to keep momentum going. Artists are in a privileged position outside disciplinary borders in their ability to engage the absurd as a means of questioning and prodding contemporary social practices and beliefs. In this panel, Carla Gannis, Foreground Design Agency, Janks Archive, and Adam Zaretsky discuss how they adopt the absurd to pry apart static ways of thinking about climate change, urban spaces, artificial intelligence, genetics, gender, among others disciplinary categories.’ @uscarchitecture

See Qingru Yang (MLA Candidate ’21), Tessa Kennedy (M.Arch ’20) and Jong Joo Kim (MBS ’21) compete in the 2020 Biodesign Challenge. They were the team selected from Prof. Aroussiak Gabrielian’s course on Biodesign this past semester. Their project, (Eco)ustic Tile is a wall system designed to act as a habitat for symbiotic organisms to mitigate noise and pollution along freeways, with a focus on the disproportionate environmental burden of freeways on lower-income communities of color. Vote for them in the Community Choice category: https://docs.google.com//1FAIpQLSdKK15-DJ_rjEdhRC/viewform. @uscarchitecture @uscgradarchitecture @biodesigned #BDC2020 #symbiosis #biodesign #collaboration

Please stay tuned for some USC MLA+U programming to stimulate discussion around landscape architecture and racial justice. #blacklivesmatter #landscapearchitectsforracialjustice #climatejustice #landscapearchitecture. Starting to compile some resources on land, landscape and racial justice: http://groundupjournal.org/blacklandscapesmatter https://www.nytimes.com//how-the-climate-movement-can-be-a https://plantingjustice.org

This is an open ideas competition. Please submit your creative ideas to transform our River.

@uscedu article featuring how @usclandarchurbanism is adapting field work to social distancing requirement. USC School of Architecture students visit important buildings, parks and structures as part of their education. But stay-at-home orders stopped those trips. That’s why Robinson, an associate professor in the school’s landscape architecture and urbanism program, developed a social-distancing field trip to the Madrona Marsh Preserve in Torrance during the spring recess. @uscarchitecture #landscapearchitecture #covid19 @ University of Southern California

Congratulations MLA+U Class of 2020!!! Stay in touch and see you soon! @uscedu @uscarchitecture

Thank you students and juries for a successful set of final reviews; a remarkable task given the extraordinary circumstances of this semester. Thanks to the online format our juries were overflowing with experts (and observers) and included people from all over the world #silverlining. especially to our graduating students in Arch 698B ADR! Thank you @aridlands & @aquercus for leading the Advanced Design Research studios this year. Also congratulations to Aroussiak Gabrielian @foreground.design.agency for her firstand highly successfulstudio taught at @uscarchitecture as tenure track faculty. Also studio teachers #EstherMargulues #TakakoTajima @uscedu #landscapearchitecture @ Los Angeles, California

Congratulations to the ASLA student award nominees from @usclandarchurbanism for their stellar presentations last weekend. also to the @socalasla jury for their generous time! Good luck! #asla @nationalasla #landscapearchitecture @ USC School of Architecture

USC MLA+U Final Reviews 5/11-5/13! Please join us for 5 great studio reviews led by @foreground.design.agency @aridlands #takakoTajima @aquercus #EstherMargulies. Reviews to be broadcast on Zoom. Links forthcoming... check back here. #climatechange #lariver #macarthurpark #aridlands #soil #death