10.09.17 - MLA students Zhuofan Wan and Tianjiao Yan receive 2017 ASLA Student Awards
Two recent Master of Landscape Architecture graduates from the Daniels Faculty — Zhuofan Wan and Tianjiao Yan — received Honor Awards in the Analysis and Planning Category from the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA). A total of 28 winners were selected from 295 entries, representing 52 schools around the world.
Zhufan Wan’s project, Desert River Water Conservation, looked at the conservation of water in desert rivers. Tarim River, in China’s Taklamakan Desert, which has "only 50mm precipitation/year, but 2000mm evaporation/year ” was the site of her project. She investigated “water-balance and water-saving strategies to restore the degraded desert river, by balancing the desert river’s resilience and humans’ water demand.” Associate Professor Robert Wright was her adviser.
“The environmental sensitivity is impressive,” said the 2017 Awards Jury of her work. “It’s very, very responsive to its setting in a really harsh climate.”
TianJiao Yan’s project, Reviving the 30 Meters, confronts the negative effects of China’s Three Gorges Dam. Writes Yan, “The construction of the hydroelectric station has displaced over 1.24 million residents and led to immense ecological degradation.”
Using Yunyang City as a testing ground, Yan’s project seeks to “transform the negative human disturbance into opportunities for ecological productivity and economic development that are both synergetic and resilient.” Assistant Professor Justine Holzman was her advisor.
The 2017 Awards Jury called Reviving the 30 Meters “A really strong project from analysis level through the planning down to site-specific proposals.”
View Yan's full project description here.
Wan and Yan, and other winners, will receive their awards at the ASLA Annual Meeting and EXPO in Los Angeles on Monday, October 23, at the Los Angeles Convention Center.
Images (top & bottom) by Tianjiao Yan; Image (middle) by Zhuofan Wan