ASLA UTAH SEPTEMBER 2020 NEWSLETTER

UPCOMING EVENTS

LuckyDog Recreation presents Berliner Rope Play & 3-Dimensional Net Systems $10 gift card for each person attending. Tuesday, October 22th, 10:00am REGISTER HERE

Victor Stanley: Virtual LA CES™ Webinar Public and the Pandemic
Speakers: Gina Ford and Brie Hensold
Credits: 1.5 PDH-HSW On-Demand. REGISTER HERE

Save the Date: reVISION ASLA 2020. November 16th thru 18th Reimagined, virtual experience for an evolving profession where you will get the opportunity to learn, connect, and celebrate landscape architecture. More Info Here

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Leadership Express

Lauren Smith, Chapter President

Happy Fall!

I hope everyone is holding up well and enjoying the cooler weather. As someone who loves the heat, I’m always sad for summer to end but I’m looking forward to these upcoming fall temperatures! Here’s a summary of what’s happening with ASLA this fall:

Top Left: Ricardo Austrich; Top Middle: Lina Maria Escobar Ocampo; Top Right: Ricardo Riveros Bottom Left: Maria Bellalta; Bottom Right: Saul Alcantara Onofre

ASLA Celebrates National Hispanic Heritage Month! ASLA is excited to offer a multi-part webinar series in celebration of #HispanicHeritageMonth. Explore cultural diversity in #LandArch and ancient Mexico nature, learn about social urbanism and reframing spatial design in LATAM, and more.

The Spectacular Nature of the Ancient Mexico Thursday, October 1, 2020 at 3:00 pm ET Description: In this webinar, Saúl Alcántara Onofre—Professor, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, and President, International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), México—will present the rich aspects of the Mesoamerican Pre-Hispanic people and their thoughts regarding the sacred vision of nature.

On Social Urbanism and Reframing Spatial Design in Latin America Thursday, October 8, 2020 at 3:00 pm ET Description: Through her upcoming publication, Social Urbanism: Reframing Spatial Design: Discourses from Latin America, María Bellalta, ASLA offers a comprehensive analysis of the foundational geography of Latin American landscapes as the instigator for urbanization processes that have impacted the continent over centuries. By tracing the historical patterns of colonization and modern planning strategies that have promoted a legacy of exploitation, Bellalta presents an alternative view that reveals the Latin American landscape as a potent “cultural space.”

Climate Change, Landscape, Cultural and Natural Heritage Thursday, October 15, 2020 at 3:00 pm ET Description: By reviewing a fire disaster caused by climate change in the context of a heritage port city (Valparaíso in Chile), Ricardo Riveros proposes ways to expose the current challenges of landscape architecture in processes of reconstruction of cities, regeneration of identity, and of mitigation strategies to prevent future natural disasters.

ASLA Mentorship Program! It’s not too late to get involved with the newly launched mentorship program! You can find more information and the sign-up link on the ASLA Mentorship webpage. The sign-up survey for mentors and mentees is the same.

Have you heard of Climate Positive Design’s Pathfinder? Pathfinder is a free online landscape carbon calculator that educates designers on how to reduce carbon footprints and sequester more carbon. New features of the updated Pathfinder include capability to compare design alternatives, analyze existing conditions, understand site impacts, and more customization. To learn more check out this upcoming webinar. Climate Positive Design’s Pathfinder 2.0 Wednesday, September 30, 2020 at 2:00 pm ET.

Save the date! reVISION ASLA 2020 coming November 16-18. More information to come!

As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please reach out to one of us, our contact information can be found on the Executive Committee page.

Stay safe and healthy. Cheers,
Lauren

CONGRATULATIONS!

To all the Awards Recipients of the 2020 ASLA Utah Annual Professional Awards Program!

We hope you enjoy the Annual Awards Video this year!

—JoEllen Grandy, VP of Membership and Member Services

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ASLA Utah Annual Conference

Colin Olson, Past President

Do you hear that?

That's me still exhaling. It's with a long sigh of relief that I thank all of you who participated in this year's conference. Thank you to everyone who made the effort to get with the vendors during the maiden voyage of our virtual expo. I have much gratitude toward our executive director, Jenny Sonntag, for planning the expo out from scratch and for all the effort she put into its execution. Thanks to each of you for sticking with us through a tough year of unwanted improvisation. And thank you all for your patience and grace while we navigated our first ever conference via Zoom.

As I'm sure many of you do, I deeply regret we couldn't gather in person and socialize and network as peers. It's crazy to think that the wind storm leaving much of downtown SLC without power could have actually left us scrambling to somehow salvage pieces of an in-person conference.

Planning the conference was a daunting task for me. Knowing that landscape architecture is a far reaching discipline and that we have members covering all of those bases made it hard to choose where or how to focus the content. Considering that a lot of my background and passion lie in urban design and city planning, a lot of it ended up aiming in that direction. I regret that we didn't have the time to touch on other areas of specialization. As a reminder, ASLA National provides us with a lot of specialized continuing education resources. If you're interested, go to the Professional Practice Resource Guides where you can spend some time on any of the below topic areas:

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I have read most of the survey responses and wanted to respond to one of the sentiments that came through in a few comments. As we all know, community building is a web of complex processes. One component in that web is accounting for the needs and situations of the many people who are impacted by the results of our work. Our speakers discussed the very real social, economic and environmental challenges that various individuals in our communities face. Many of these challenges relate to - or are - issues that come up in political discourse. I felt the speakers did well at addressing these topics through their individual professional and personal lenses while keeping specific political views out of it as much as that is possible. If we desire to work on projects that affect the public, we must be willing to have such discussions and do so with open minds. The human experience is vast and varied and we need this type of discourse in order to better serve the citizens whose quality of life we are impacting with our work.

Thanks to all of you who filled out the survey. We really appreciate both the compliments and the constructive criticism. I know Lauren and the conference planning committee (email Lauren if you want to be part of that - laurenksmith.asla@gmail.com) will take all of it into consideration while planning a valuable conference for next year. I hope to see you all there in person.

Sincerely,
Colin Olson
ASLA Utah Past President

VENDOR EXPO RAFFLE WINNERS

GRAND PRIZE: Mike McClellan, Kristina Ainsworth, Dan Sonntag

Victor Stanley - Bruce Brown
BioGrass - Alison Gowan
RainBird - Nathan Jaramillo
Live Earth - Cable Jones
Anova - Ladd Scheiss
Hunter/FX Lumiere - Eric Lyman, Cody Brazell, Kris Kvarfordt
Landscape Forms - Bronson Tatton
LuckyDog Recreation -
Amiad - Hailey Wall
Confluence Products - Bronson Tatton, Dan Sonntag, Hailey Wall, Brandon Ruiz
Contech - Hailey Wall
Downs & Assoc - Brandon Ruiz
Forms+Surfaces - Alison Gowan
Garrett & Company - Jon Ruedas
Omega II - JoEllen Grandy, Tyler Smithson, Julian Rosario
Playspace Designs - Troy Sanders
StoneCover - Liz Best

LARE Prep

Kyle Funk, Emerging Professionals Chair

Need to prepare for the LARE exams in your state? Help is here!

Register for SGLA Technical Training’s popular LARE Preparatory Courses, now available as live, online classes for candidates across the US and Canada.

SGLA Technical Training is pleased to be able to continue offering Freeman & Jewell’s preparatory courses for candidates taking the Landscape Architect Registration Examination. These courses have historically been in-person, on-site bootcamps over several weekends in Berkeley, CA. Ray Freeman’s courses attracted students from 46 states, five Canadian provinces, Puerto Rico and DC.

SGLA Technical Training has now evolved and can deliver Ray’s content through live, online classes, open to the entire US and Canada. This meets the challenge of the current worldwide pandemic --- while also giving students across the country greater flexibility and access to this powerful learning community.

October round of prep courses will provide a review of the content for Sections 1 and 2 combined in one weekend, and a grading and drainage intensive for Section 4.

The courses are taught by Sarah Gronquest, licensed Landscape Architect with decades of experience. Sarah Gronquist has taught exam preparation and university level courses at UC Berkeley and Merritt College for 15 years, including grading and drainage, construction detailing, planting design, business practices, and professional practice.

For complete information on the upcoming course offering and to register, CLICK HERE.

Special Thanks to ASLA Utah Sponsors