Get Ready for Soak it Up: Los Angeles, CA

The upcoming Soak it Up: Los Angeles, CA, conference, December 4 to December 6, 2025, will expand upon the Soak it Up: Virtual Global Summit that premiered on May 7, 2025, in partnership with PlayCore, which addressed the role of landscape architecture in water management. In December, The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF) in partnership with the University of Southern California (USC), Southern California Chapter ASLA, and SWA Group will bring together industry, non-profit, and academic professionals to discuss these critical issues in person. 

The five presentations, sponsored and underwritten by PlayCore, feature the late Kongjian Yu, the 2023 Cornelia Hahn Oberlander laureate and champion of the “sponge cities” concept speaking about approaches in China, and four other well-known landscape architects, including Mia Lehrer (United States), Kotchakorn Voraakhom (Thailand), Jasper Hugtenburg (Netherlands), and Herbert Dreiseitl (Germany). 

Prepare for the upcoming conference by taking in these roughly 35- to 40-minute, edited presentations that focus on contemporary environmental and social challenges: biodiversity loss, climate change, and social inequities when designing and managing water. 

Their shared ambitions transcend distant geographies and distinct political, regulatory, and economic circumstances and are organized around the following topics: 

1.     The origin stories of the speakers, specifically how they found their way to landscape architecture and when they realized this profession would be their life’s work; 

2.    How the practitioner got involved in water management issues, how their work developed over time, current water management challenges in their region, and unique geographic and cultural considerations; 

3.    The general approach to uniting design with water management and the aspects of water management with which they’ve been involved (e.g. rivers, coastal erosion, sea level rise, etc.); 

4.    A description of two to three specific projects that illustrate the speaker’s approach and design philosophy, and reflections on how they measure success in this work; and, 

5.    Closing thoughts where the practitioner addresses the importance of landscape architecture in addressing contemporary environmental and social challenges and why landscape architects should lead this charge. 

Read about each of the webinar presenters here, and the regions of the world that they spoke about: 

China 

Kongjian Yu, the late Harvard-educated founder and principal designer at the Beijing-based landscape architecture firm Turenscape and 2023 Oberlander Prize laureate, was a champion of the “sponge cities” concept for mitigating urban flooding. Kongjian Yu stated he was “born a landscape architect” and cited his childhood in Dong Yu village in Jinhua, Zhejiang Province as where he first understood the interaction between land, plants, water, and people. The careful management of the village’s paddies insured each had sufficient water during the dry season; from this he learned about scale and the subtleness of topography. A pivotal childhood experience during which he nearly drowned made him realize the importance of water as well as how to regulate water, design with water, and combine green and blue (plant materials and water). The concrete channelizing of his village’s water ways and use of chemicals led to pollution and changed his hometown “from a paradise to a hell.” This represents a misuse of industrial technologies and so-called grey infrastructure that has killed nature-based ecosystems. Yu said this has played out elsewhere in the world leading to a global tragedy that is now being accelerated by climate change. All of this propelled his interest in the “sponge cities” concept and the power of the landscape architecture profession to develop and implement nature-based solutions, a new infrastructure. He presents three significant projects before stating that landscape architecture is the only profession that can solve multiple problems at once, and that the biggest mission for landscape architecture is “the creation of a sponge planet.” 

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United States 

El Salvador-born, Los Angeles-based landscape architect Mia Lehrer speaks lovingly of her lush homeland and climbing volcanoes as a child. She studied at Tufts University (where she had to get used to snow) and was captivated by the geology course. In the lobby of Harvard’s Graduate School of Design she saw Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr.’s massive competition drawing for New York’s Central Park that introduced her to the discipline of landscape architecture. The department chair, Peter Walker, was very welcoming, and she encountered some of the leading figures in the field. Lehrer describes becoming aware of the layered planning and design decisions in nature-based work, and discusses Canadian landscape architect Cornelia Oberlander’s emphasis on the importance of research and knowing your plant materials. She describes early projects in Los Angeles and becoming involved with the revitalization of the Los Angeles River and its 52 miles of concretized channels, with which she is still actively involved and about which she provides many fascinating details. Lehrer is also purposeful in making professional connections and serves on the LA Business Council, LA Water and Power Commission, among others. Another major project is transforming a giant landfill into a public park, about which she observes: recreating nature is not easy especially when you’re working on a pile of garbage. 

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Thailand 

Landscape architect Kotchakorn Voraakhom, CEO and Founder of Landprocess and Porous City Network and a native of Bangkok, Thailand, focuses on water management in urban settings. She discusses water as a dichotomy—it is life and life threatening. Managing water involves design, ecology, and an understanding of the political landscape. Her practice is based on her deep knowledge of Bangkok, which Voraakhom says is located in a floodplain, is part of a watershed, and what she calls “a city of water,” and not an island. When it comes to water there are many governmental bodies with jurisdiction, a whole bureaucracy dealing with the structure of “water governance;” each sector has a different understanding and management approach. She encourages every landscape architect to understand water governance. Bangkok uses a lot of traditional “gray infrastructure.” By 2050 the city will receive 30% more rain. How, she asks, can the city survive? The presentation ends with x case studies of her work followed by a high note proclaiming: “landscape architecture gives you the tools to make what you wish for, what you’re shouting for, what you’re fighting for, tangible.” 

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Netherlands

Jasper Hugtenburg is a landscape architect and a geographer who was born and raised in a Dutch polder —land that is reclaimed from the sea (a process Hugtenburg says that yields a “truly manmade landscape”). The construction of polders dates to the twelfth century and the process is always being reworked and refined. Hugtenburg, citing this history, says it’s a “privilege to adjust these landscapes to present day needs.” He adds, living in a polder means you’re always aware of the dangers of the water around you. At the University of Utrecht he specialized in coastal and river systems. He describes the “Room for the River Project” as the event that resulted in the founding of the firm for which he works, H+N+S Land Architecture; the firm is now more than 25 years old. He also discusses the “Four Maxims of the Dutch Approach to Landscape Architecture.” He describes landscape architecture as an “open ended” process and says he works in close collaboration with allied professionals and stakeholders. The Netherlands deals with water coming from all directions: from the rivers; the sea; the sky, in the form of storms; and the ground water table. He then provides an overview of water and landscape management and planning at three sites along the Meuse River. ***** Germany Herbert Dreiseitl, with the German firm Dreiseitl Consulting, is a landscape architect, urban designer, water artist, interdisciplinary planner. He was inspired by family outings to the rivers and mountains; by his mid-teens he was aware of the enormous influence of humans on the environment, such as the shrinking of glaciers. Flooding for him became personal when in his hometown it knocked out the main train station. This presentation covers his career arc from 1980 and the establishment of his eponymous firm, to the present day, a journey, he says, that started with small art projects, then grew in scale to villages and cities and includes a mining site in Germany’s Ruhr Valley, Berlin’s Potsdamer Platz, pocket parks in Copenhagen, Hamburg, and Singapore, and his current work in Milwaukee, WI, at Catalano Square. Dreiseitl also discusses the importance of art and his use of art exercises as part of the public process. Following his case studies, he concludes with a call to help cities shape policies to be more blue/green and more nature-based solutions. According to Dreiseitl: “Water is the most important landscape architecture element” and “even a drop of water can give us hope.”

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Germany 

Herbert Dreiseitl, with the German firm Dreiseitl Consulting, is a landscape architect, urban designer, water artist, interdisciplinary planner. He was inspired by family outings to the rivers and mountains; by his mid-teens he was aware of the enormous influence of humans on the environment, such as the shrinking of glaciers. Flooding for him became personal when in his hometown it knocked out the main train station. This presentation covers his career arc from 1980 and the establishment of his eponymous firm, to the present day, a journey, he says, that started with small art projects, then grew in scale to villages and cities and includes a mining site in Germany’s Ruhr Valley, Berlin’s Potsdamer Platz, pocket parks in Copenhagen, Hamburg, and Singapore, and his current work in Milwaukee, WI, at Catalano Square. Dreiseitl also discusses the importance of art and his use of art exercises as part of the public process. Following his case studies, he concludes with a call to help cities shape policies to be more blue/green and more nature-based solutions. According to Dreiseitl: “Water is the most important landscape architecture element” and “even a drop of water can give us hope.”

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