Veredict of the International Landscape School's Prize 2021, by Banc de Sabadell Foundation
Winner: City College of New York
International Jury veredict: "Professor Denise Hoffman Brown put her students front and centre in the presentation of their work. The students worked in Mumbai, in the Jersey Meadowlands, with microbes, in Los Angeles with roads and even with death and decay. The work offers alternate perspectives and new insights. The students spoke eloquently, posing questions, responding thoughtfully. From City College of New York we see work from across the globe that draws out important theoretical dimensions for our field. The questions are wonderfully contextualised and are held on to as the projects advance into finer scales. The projects are challenging and offer something quite unexpected, weaving together socio-environmental issues in new ways. Ultimately, The work of City College of New York brought the jury together in their discussions about sensing movement, directionality and ambition in the field".
Special Mention: University of Technology Sydney
International Jury veredict: The work is original and highly relational and drew out diverge of opinion from the jury. For many of the jurors this work was at the highest level of pedagogic innovation and much admired. The jury was impressed by the way in which the students consulted with multiple stakeholders on their learning journey. Professor Penny Allen spoke beautifully of the need for both distancing and intimacy in the approach. We loved the way the students re-envisioned technical terms and developed Climate Stories. The representation of issues is undertaken with flare and the work was beautifully presented to the jury.
Special mention: School of Architecture Urban Planning Construction Engineering Politecnico di Milano
International Jury veredict: The work from Politecnico di Milano made it to the shortlist of many members of the jury. The work is articulate and beautifully thorough, delivering engineering solutions that are poetic rather than prosaic. Representations allowed the jury to see how entities in the landscape might work together. The proposals are timely in their focus on climate change-driven water issues, both too much and too little, and speculate about creating a balance of the two throughout the year. The level of understanding of constructed and natural regional water systems, combined with clear and compelling drawings, grounded their proposals and imbued the work with a high level of design resolution.
Harvard University Graduate School of Design
International Jury veredict: The work is confident and compelling. Beautiful infrastructures created by the students produce new spatial typologies for the territory. The projects often finding focus and meaning at mid-scales drawing out new paradigms of thought and action. In addition to addressing the physical challenges of climate-driven water issues, this work addressed serious spatial and social problems such as food deserts by integrating local and low tech operations into communities.
Leibniz University Hannover
International Jury veredict: who the jurors felt dealt with the Climate Emergency strongly. The project sites were ambitious and compelling and we loved the way in which often forgotten entities (such as water tables) found a new presence through design thinking.
* The international Jury of the International Landscape School's Prize 2021, by Banc de Sabadell Foundation, was composed by Tim Baird, Brigitte Colin, Félix Solaguren, Lisa Mackenzie, Philippe Poullaouec-Gonidec.
