Congratulations to the student team from Washington University in St. Louis who won the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) Award of Excellence for their “One Tree Project.”
The team of landscape architecture students and faculty in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts investigated and documented a single tree, a pin oak that was part of the allee on Brookings Drive prior to the east end construction. The goal of the project: to understand the greater meaning of trees in our urban ecosystem.
Collaborating with arborists, ecologists, landscape architects, sculptors, dendrochronologists and artists, the students explored the many meanings of one tree “from root to crown, from microbial sub-soil cultures to species habitats in its highest branches, from the monoculture of the 43 tree allée, to the diverse community beyond.”
The project was capped by a ritual felling of a single tree in advance of the campus transformation, with this “One Tree” returning to the new landscape as a nurse log in 2019.
“Just beautiful! One of the most impressive projects that involves students. This is the first time I’ve ever seen tree roots this way.”
2018 Awards Jury
Learn more about the winning project on the ASLA site.