Landscape Architecture Student Wins National Olmsted Scholar Award

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Karina Ramos Avila, a Class of 2018 graduate in landscape architecture, has been named the 2018 undergraduate National Olmsted Scholar by the Landscape Architecture Foundation (LAF).

The award is given to landscape architecture students with outstanding potential for becoming future leaders and includes $15,000 to use toward a project she is proposing. LAF describes the honor as “the premier national award and recognition program for landscape architecture students.”

Ramos Avila was selected from 35 undergraduate students nominated by landscape architecture programs across the nation.

She will use the award to design a physical plan for Puente Piedra, an emerging town about 35 miles from Lima, Peru, where she was born. The design will be based upon work of scholar David Gouverneur, who has written about the need to create an environmental and urban framework to transform barrios and slums into more livable communities.

Ramos Avila will first conduct case-study research in her hometown of Los Olivos, an adjacent district that evolved through the planned growth and development of an existing informal settlement.

She plans to present her findings and recommendations to Peru’s federal housing and urban development agency.

Ramos Avila was born in Lima, where her mother was a planner for the Peruvian government. When she was 8 years old they moved to Hartford, Connecticut, to join her father, who had been living there for several years.

“I think at that age you're very impressionable, and I really got to see firsthand the social inequalities in Lima. As a child, I remember women and children trying to sell food out on the street because they had no money to buy food or even clothes. I think that always has impacted me,” she says.

“Now that I'm in landscape architecture I’ve realized how you can help communities, and hopefully improve people’s lives at large scales,” Ramos Avila said.

“This year’s Olmsted Scholars showed a breadth of interest and the commitment to bettering our environment through the agency of design that is truly inspiring,” said LAF president Adam Greenspan. “LAF is proud to honor these students and to support them in their interests and perseverance to create great places and a better world.”

LAF will formally recognize Ramos Avila, as well as the national graduate student award winner and graduate and undergraduate finalists, at its Olmsted Scholar Luncheon on Oct. 18 in Philadelphia.