Friday, November 11

Carbon in the Built Environment: Strategies for Low-Carbon Design at Each Phase

Transform your practice by taking responsibility for the climate impacts of your projects, from neighborhood to garden scales. This session covers emissions considerations at each design stage and includes training sessions on open-source tools, client management strategies, and a working session to test project opportunities.

9:00 to 11:30 a.m.

Sasaki speaker: Chris Hardy, ASLA, LEED AP ND

From Classroom to Practice: Skills, Mentorship, Culture and Experience

The Black Landscape Architects Network (BlackLAN) will be hosting a panel discussion following the annual BlackLAN luncheon. The panel will feature students in conversation with professionals and professors about the experience of moving from academy to practice through the lens of the black experience.

2:00 to 4:00 p.m.

Sasaki speaker: Julian Stanfield

Building on Unstable Ground

Cities are finding innovative ways to build open spaces by utilizing sites with extremely challenging contexts, including sites on non-traditional fill. We will move from theories to realities, and explore the design, engineering, and construction required to build University Lakes in Baton Rouge and Moakley Park in Boston.

3:30 to 4:30 p.m.

Sasaki speaker: Anna Cawrse, ASLA, PLA

Saturday, November 12

Drawing Beyond Concepts: The Role of Drawing from Sketch Through Construction

Drawing enables our minds to explore ideas unencumbered. This “from the elbow” investigation becomes invisible behind the glossy rendering and ultimately the built space, so this session pulls back the curtain to explore the processes that led to places such as Bonnet Springs Park, Lurie Garden, and Palm Springs Park.

2:00 to 3:15 p.m.

Sasaki speaker: Anna Cawrse, ASLA, PLA

Post-industrial Landscape: Preservation, Interpretation, Transformation

Former industrial sites often carry contested legacies—they represent substantial land assets, carry cultural significance, and are also highly degraded and contaminated landscapes. Join this session to explore how the post-industrial landscape can redefine its ecological, social, and economic value to build resilient communities.

3:45 to 5:00 p.m.

Sasaki speaker: Dou Zhang, FASLA, LEED AP BD+C, SITES AP

Sunday, November 13

Writing in Practice | The Practice of Writing

Whatever your practice—private, public, or academic—writing is probably an integral component, and your professional success may well depend on how well you write. This session will offer methods, techniques, tools, and insights for successful writing within and beyond design practice based on the panelists’ varied experiences.

9:00 to 10:00 a.m.

Sasaki speaker: Allyson Mendenhall, FASLA, PLA, LEED Green Associate

Confronting the Biodiversity Crisis Through Landscape Architecture: A Call to Action

We are witnessing a biodiversity crisis, with thousands of species lost, forever, each year. This session will help design professionals understand the many facets of biodiversity, and the means by which they can support biodiversity through design decisions.

2:00 to 3:15 p.m.

Sasaki speaker: Kelly Farrell

(Re)defining Universal Design: Case Studies and Explorations in Inclusion and Access

What is Universal Design? Can we really design for “all?” In this session, three experts will share successful applications of Universal Design and explore how to center disabled lived experiences, how to enhance accessibility, and how to make the design process as inclusive as possible.

2:00 to 3:15 p.m.

Sasaki speaker: Ian Scherling, ASLA, PLA

Monday, November 14

Data Driven Design: Insights from the ASLA BIM Working Group

Within the framework of current major shifts in the AECO industry driven by BIM, particularly the US market, Landscape Architecture fits an ideal coordinating role of connecting tissue between other trades. This session targets to depict concrete solutions to this challenge in a data-centric design world.

9:00 to 11:30 a.m.

Sasaki speaker: Phyllis Zhou, ASLA

Making It Real: The Descanso Gardens Master Plan from Vision to Implementation

Want to prevent your plans from sitting on a shelf collecting dust? This session will dive into the Descanso Gardens’ 2020 Master Plan and explore how the team is working to get things built. This involves problem-solving, team building, budgeting, phasing, and lots of elbow grease.

Sasaki speaker: Ruth Siegel, PLA

11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.