Lauren Griffith, FASLA

Nomination in Leadership/Management by the Texas Chapter
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A perceptive and intuitive designer, Lauren Griffith has helped create many meaningful, enduring public spaces over the last four decades, conceiving innovative program and design features and building on lessons learned from collaborating with talented professionals. Her work has played a significant role in the revitalization of downtown Houston, contributing to its metamorphosis from a weekly commerce center, desolate after hours and on weekends, to an active destination with vibrant, award-winning open spaces. Lauren's transformational touch can be seen at Sesquicentennial Park, Discovery Green, Market Square Park, and the Barbara Bush Literacy Plaza, among others, many of them quickly becoming beloved landmarks. As chair of the ASLA Houston-Gulf Coast Section in 1983, Lauren was instrumental in organizing pro bono efforts among local landscape architects to launch the SPARK School Park program, an innovative park equity program that combines public and private funds to develop parks on school grounds that are open to the public when school is not in session. Lauren has worked on 36 SPARK Parks in racially diverse neighborhoods throughout Houston, many of them in underserved communities. Her body of work exemplifies the leading role that landscape architecture can play in creating equitable, livable, economically viable, and appealing communities.