Image
Honors and Awards
UMass Amherst Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning Department Receives National Design Studio Award
Award to support studio project in Boston’s West End neighborhood this spring
The Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning (LARP) Department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has received a National Design Studio Award from Boston-based Envision Resilience, recognizing the program’s leadership in climate-adaptive planning and design education.
UMass Amherst is one of eight universities nationwide selected to receive the inaugural National Design Studio Award, which supports university design studios that partner with communities to develop innovative responses to climate change.
LARP has been an active participant in the environmental nonprofit’s signature program, the annual Envision Resilience Challenge, which convenes students in architecture, landscape architecture, planning, environmental science and the arts to work directly with communities on adaptive design solutions.
The National Design Studio Award includes a $9,500 grant that will support a studio project in Boston this spring led by LARP Associate Professor Carolina Aragón and Professor Robert Ryan. Their studio will be part of Envision Resilience’s expanded national challenge, which brings together multidisciplinary student teams from universities across the United States to address climate resilience in diverse landscapes, including rivers, forests, wetlands, coastlines and urban areas.
“This grant will allow our students to help Boston’s West End neighborhood plan for the challenges of climate change, including increased urban heat and flooding through innovatively designed greenspace,” Ryan says. “The grant helps offset the costs for student travel and other studio expenses.”
In 2025, graduate students in Assistant Professor Samantha Solano’s landscape architecture studio competed in the Midcoast Maine Challenge. Working with the City of Bath, students helped develop strategies to address extreme sea-level rise and tidal flooding affecting the city’s critical landscapes and infrastructure.
Founded in 2020, Envision Resilience advances innovative planning and design through student and community partnerships focused on climate adaptation. Its programs have engaged more than 520 undergraduate and graduate students from 20 universities.
Read More
A 2024 master’s studio led by Camille Barchers, assistant professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning, has won the American Planning Association Massachusetts Chapter’s 2025 student project award for its “Comprehensive Climate Action Plan – Municipal Emissions Reduction Playbook,” a tool designed to help local planners in New Haven County, Connecticut identify and implement carbon-cutting strategies.
Students in Frank Sleegers’ Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning course are envisioning how one of Hartford’s most contaminated properties could one day become a model for urban revitalization and environmental recovery.
In a region long defined by its rivers and mountain valleys, a partnership between the Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning and local governments is helping Vermont communities confront the growing threat of flooding.