
ICS Colleagues Win ASLA Planning and Analysis Award
ICS/Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) affiliates Sourav Kumir Biswas and Flavio Sciaraffia won a Planning and Analysis Award from the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) for their project: Productive Conservation. Biswas and Sciaraffia analyzed landscape-scale agricultural practices for the greater Mexico City region that reduce water consumption, resist drought, limit nitrogen pollution, create more structurally resilient crops, enhance native ecologies, and improve water quality. They then explored how to implement these practices at multiple design scales: from a single farm site, to a tributary drainage area, to Mexico City’s entire hydrologic basin.
Their work resulted in funding from Harvard’s Zofnass Program for Sustainable Infrastructure, where they worked under the direction of GSD Lincoln Loeb Fellow and ICS Principal Scott Campbell—to examine how similar frameworks could help communities in the American West think about the needs of cities, agriculture, and nature when grappling with issues related to intense water scarcity.
To see how these efforts contributed to ICS projects, read ICS’s Navigating the Wake of Municipal Water Sales report—a collaborative effort between ICS, the researchers, and members of communities in Colorado’s Lower Arkansas Valley.