Louisiana ASLA Chapter

by Shannon Blakeman, ASLA, Chapter President

Jeffrey Carbo Landscape Architects received a 2012 Honor Award from Louisiana's ASLA chapter for their contribution to the redevelopment of Hale Hall at Louisiana Tech University. The firm developed a "core campus green" plan with the project architect that led to the conversion of a parking lot and service roads around the building into expansive lawn spaces.

Louisiana's ASLA chapter (LCASLA) presented the Honor Award in the "Built Environment" category to Alexandria, La. firm Jeffrey Carbo Landscape Architects for the renovation of Hale Hall at Louisiana Tech University. The project redeveloped the spaces around the building – which began life as a dormitory in 1898 – into pedestrian friendly, park-like with large expanses of lawn. New landscaping elements included perennial flowers along a new alumni walk, and eliminated a secondary street and parking to create more open, uninterrupted green spaces surrounding the structure. Carbo also received a Merit award for work on Alexandria's Two Centre Court Office Tower, as well as three awards for residential landscaping projects.

The chapter supported the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana (CRCL) following the devastation brought by Hurricane Isaac in August, the latest in a series of disasters to hit the state, including Tropical Storm Lee in 2011 and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010.

During the CRCL's "Save Our Shore" event in September, volunteers planted more than 12,000 plugs of dune grass and installed dune fences at Grand Isle State Park on Grand Isle, where Isaac washed away many of the dunes that protect the park's shoreline wetlands; a coastal forest restoration project near the Caernarvon Diversion in Plaquemines Parish, La., also set out to plant 300 cypress trees to provide wildlife habitat and storm protection for the marsh and inland biospheres.