The landscape architecture program at University of Technology Sydney (UTS) has been awarded a Special Mention in the International Landscape School’s Prize at the 11th Barcelona Biennale of Landscape Architecture held in October.
The program and symposium, which takes places every two years, includes two awards programs – the Rosa Barba Prize celebrates innovative and impactful landscape architecture projects, and the International Landscape School’s prize recognizes quality of work in tertiary-level landscape architecture programs.
In this year’s edition of the International Landscape School’s Prize, City College of New York was announced the winner, with the jury noting the work produced by the institution as bringing out important theoretical dimensions for the discipline of landscape architecture.
“The [project] questions are wonderfully contextualised and are held on to as the [work] advances into finer scales,” the jury citation reads. “The projects [tackled] are challenging, offer something quite unexpected, [and weave] together socio-environmental issues in new ways.”
In addition to the overall winner, the jury awarded two Special Mentions, recognizing the School of Architecture, Urban Planning, Construction and Engineering at the Politecnico di Milano; and University of Technology Sydney.
The jury commented on the originality of the work at UTS, commenting that “for many of the jurors this work was at the highest level of pedagogic innovation.”
“The jury was impressed by the way in which the students consulted with multiple stakeholders on their learning journey,” reads the citation. “Professor Penny Allen spoke beautifully of the need for both distancing and intimacy in the approach. [The jury] 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.”
The 2021 International Landscape School’s Prize jury comprised Tim Baird (principal, Landworks Studio), Brigitte Colin (UNESCO), Félix Solaguren (director, Barcelona School of Architecture), Lisa Mackenzie (senior lecturer, The Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture), and Philippe Poullaouec-Gonidec (UNESCO Chair in Urban Landscape, University of Montreal).
