MLA Candidate Joyce Fong receives LAF's Joe Lalli Honor Scholarship

Student Award
05.22.24

Joyce Fong

UVA School of Architecture is happy to announce that Joyce Fong (MLA '25) has recently been awarded the LAF Honor Scholarship in memory of Joe Lalli, FASLA (First Runner-up Award). This scholarship of $10,000 is one of 28 student awards given this year by the Landscape Architecture Foundation in order to support the next generation of designers by rewarding superior student performance, supporting access and diversity, supporting original research, and assisting students with unmet financial needs.

The national cohort of student award recipients were selected through a competitive process by sponsor- and LAF-convened juries of leaders in landscape architecture practice, academia, and industry. The LAF Honor Scholarship that Fong received was established in memory of Joseph J. Lalli, FASLA (1943-2014) and his 46-year career as a landscape architect, artist, philanthropist, mentor, and teacher.

Lalli was the chairman and former president of the firm EDSA and had more than 500 projects to his credit in 40 countries. He was a persuasive leader, well-known and admired for his modesty and generosity. He experienced great value in his master’s degree and wanted to help make the opportunity for graduate education accessible to others.

Joyce Fong Decomposition 1
Re(de)fining Decomposition: This project aims to redefine decomposition as a joyful process and refine the general impression people have to deadwood. People are invited to witness the death of trees, to see, to touch, and to engage with this slow, quiet, yet elegant process. Image © Joyce Fong


Fong sees herself not as a typical landscape designer, but as a "landscape translator," someone who bridges communities with their landscape through design. She is passionate about exploring the outdoors and experimenting with various media to represent and convey the language of the landscape. Valuing both nature and humans, she is seeking creative ways to establish reciprocal relationships through landscape design in which we co-create with nature. She is also interested in topics of environmental justice, responsive environmental design, and landscape resiliency. Before coming to UVA, she worked as a teaching and research assistant at the Division of Landscape Architecture at the University of Hong Kong. 

Joyce Fong Decomposition 2
Joyce Fong Decomposition 3
Re(de)fining Decomposition received an ASLA Student Honor Award and a VA ASLA Commendation Award noted by a juror as "provid[ing] important insight into an often-overlooked world of complex landscapes and interconnectivity. The concept of renewal is a universal message that implies hope." Images © Joyce Fong


The School and the Landscape Architecture Department congratulates Joyce Fong on this well-deserved recognition!

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