Firm: David Driapsa Landscape Architect, Naples, Florida
ASLA Chapter: Florida
Category: Service

A strong leader was needed when the national ASLA advocacy for congressional funding of the Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS) ended. David Driapsa took those reins. He focused implementing HALS at the ASLA chapter level, which resulted in a period of unprecedented success. Hundreds of landscapes were entered into the Library of Congress, and HALS emerged stronger, with many thousands of people appreciating landscape architects as conservationists. Driapsa shares his knowledge through the historic landscapes he's recorded, e.g., Mount Lebanon Shaker Village; Spanish Colonial village of Chimayo, N.M.; the segregated African American community of Smokey Hollow; the Olmsted brothers' "lost village" of Boca Grande; and the winter estate of Thomas Edison.