Five student projects from the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) have received Graduate Honor Awards in the 2026 Boston Society of Landscape Architects (BSLA) Design Awards, capturing the entire Graduate Student awards category.
The annual program recognizes projects that advance design excellence through innovation, environmental stewardship, and expanded public understanding of landscape architecture. New in 2026, BSLA introduced distinct award categories for undergraduate and graduate student work.
This year’s recognized projects reflect the range of contemporary inquiry underway at the GSD, engaging questions of climate adaptation, environmental change, post-extractive futures, and landscape storytelling.
Nathan Sweitzer (MLA II ’26) was honored for “Atmospheric Springs,” which considers fog as environmental infrastructure and speculative design medium in Los Angeles. Caroline Brodeur’s (MLA I/MUP ’26) “Phasing Freshwater” investigates freshwater systems as dynamic landscapes shaped by ecological change and temporal adaptation. Zenith (Zhiming) Zhang’s (MLA I AP ’26) “Reclaimed Edges,” uses landscape as a framework for rethinking transitional territories and unstable boundaries. Hanrui (Freya) Fu (MLA II ’26) addresses landscapes shaped by extraction in “Rewinding (Coal)ocene,” exploring how ecological restoration and collective stewardship might open alternative futures. Anne Tong (MLA ’25) and Junia Yang (MLA ’24) use narrative and speculative landscape practices in “Tortoise and Tarantula: Tales from the Edge,” to consider border conditions from multispecies perspectives.
In addition, Gary Hilderbrand‘s, GSD Peter Louis Hornbeck Professor in Practice of Landscape Architecture, firm Reed Hilderbrand was noted in the Professionals, Excellence category for their collaboration with the Wabanaki Nations for the project “Indigenous Knowledges and Design Tekakapimek.”
Many GSD alumni were also part of the teams honored in the other Professionals categories. In Analysis and Planning, “Branching Generations: Arboretum San Antonio,” led by Anna Cawrse (MLA ’12) at Sasaki, was honored, along with “Philips Square Design,” led by Haitao Zhang (MDes ’04) at Sasaki. In Residential Design, “Oak Springs Farm,” led by Stephen Stimson (MLA ’87) and Lauren Stimson and their team were honored; Stimson was also recognized in the General Design category for “COONAMESSETT: Gateway to a Living River.” Naomi Cottrell (MLA ’02) was recognized for “Ken Kelly Park: Performance, Pocket-sized.”