Aurora Alcaide and Andrew Donohue, two FIU Landscape Architecture Environment + Urban Design masters candidates, received a Student Design Award at the 2017 Florida ASLA Conference & Expo.
Alcaide and Donohue’s project entitled “Unifying Cultures: Integration and Inclusion Through Space” was chosen by the Florida Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects Design Awards Committee as a winning submission for the Design Awards Program.
The program encourages the advancement, expansion, and recognition of the Landscape Architecture profession by honoring projects that blend environmental and artistic principles that emphasize beauty, function, and the sustainability. [source: www.flasla.org]
Alcaide and Donohue’s project seeks to integrate and elevate the growing immigrant, particularly the Haitian and Bahamian communities by focusing on the inherent similarities between the two cultures while still highlighting what makes each individual nation and peoples vibrant and unique.
The project is composed of three distinct but interlaced ideas, which included a retroactive remediation of an existing temporary refugee settlement, a preemptive creation of a new model community to help successfully bring refugees into Bahamian society and the design and construction of a Caribbean Heritage Park (a productive green space offering venues for socialization, education, commerce and agriculture). The park and communities were designed to facilitate conversation and interaction between the cultures, tourists and other park goers.
Alcaide and Donohue drew inspiration from today’s international environment in The Bahamas, a country currently witnessing the largest diaspora in human history. This project aims to foster and build relationships between New Providence and The Bahamas by working with, not against, refugees by offering opportunities, housing and multi-purpose green space with hopes to be an example of a 21st century immigration.
Congratulations to both FIU LAEUD students for accomplishing this prestigious recognition!
To learn more about the Florida ASLA Conference & Design Awards, click here.
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