Project: Ladera | Mehri Farnaz, Jonathan Gomez, Josue Guerrero, Emma Shepard, Nesreen Jallad
Texas Tech's Department of Landscape Architecture students recently took home eight awards in a broad range of categories from the Texas Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects' 2026 Design Competition. The honors were presented during the spring semester at the Texas ASLA Annual Conference in Fort Worth.
“The projects showed work across topics such as early childhood nature play and urban design,” said Kathryn Nelson, Associate Professor of Practice and Assistant Department Chair within the Department of Landscape Architecture. “The projects were created during participation in the sophomore through graduate-level design studios.”
- Noc2rno | General Design (Award: Merit) | Jonathan Gomez
- Raices | General Design (Award: Merit) | Group: Anissa Cantu, Enya Conde, Raegan Jabor, Jocseline Medina
- Acequia Channels | Urban Design (Award: Honor) | Ella Gielstra
- Landscape Architecture in Carceral Environments | Undergraduate Research (Award: Honor) | Jocseline Medina
- Play & Grow: A Nature-based Learning Playscape | General Design (Award: Honor) | Mehri Farnaz
- Ladera | General Design (Award: Excellence) | Group: Mehri Farnaz, Jonathan Gomez, Josue Guerrero, Emma Shepard and Nesreen Jallad
- Play with Playa: A Nature Based Learning Playground for Lubbock's Playa Lakes | Graduate General Design (Award: Merit) | Fawzia Bhuiyan
- Synanthropic Corridor: Rethinking Human-Elephant Interactions Through Community Conservation in Northern Bangladesh | Graduate General Design (Award: Merit) | Shafaet Abir
In other action during this time, approximately 56 students from the department took the opportunity to participate in an extended field trip to multiple landscape architecture firms and site visits in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Andrew Castilleja, an Assistant Professor of Practice in the Department of Landscape Architecture, led the off-campus program.
Among the sites visited were:
- Studio Outside (Downtown Dallas): Students were welcomed by alumni Katie Roberson (2021), Ryan Shelburn (2025), and Kaitlin Craig (2017)
- Harwood Park: Michael Tsapos (2020 Graduate and Senior Associate at Ten Eyck Landscape Architects) gave students a tour of the award-winning project
- Fort Worth: The following day, the group toured the Fort Worth Stockyards and the Fort Worth Water Gardens
CONTACT: Kathryn Nelson, Associate Professor of Practice and Assistant Department Chair, Department of Landscape Architecture, Texas Tech University at (806) 834-2862 or Kathryn.Nelson@ttu.edu
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