Congrats Alexa Vaughn-Brainard awarded 2020-2021 LAF Fellowship for Innovation and Leadership!

Congratulations Alexa Vaughn-Brainard, Landscape Designer at OLIN + OLIN Labs member - her work Design with Disabled People Now: A Toolkit for Landscape Architects and Planners to Create Accessible & Inclusive Landscapes has been selected for one of six Landscape Architecture Foundation’s Fellowship for Innovation and Leadership!

Alexa’s work builds on the Inclusion & Access: Revisiting Universal Design initiative. Alexa describes her approach to the LAF Fellowship project:

“It’s critical to design for diversity, particularly for disabled people who are often overlooked in the design process. Landscape architects, designers, and planners are tasked with designing public spaces for all. Designers must always ask who we design for, who is doing the designing, and how we understand their needs. Thus, it is critical that a disabled person completes this work. A Deaf woman, Alexa aims to create a toolkit for landscape designers and planners to follow, made by and for disabled people, to come to a better understanding of the disabled community’s needs in the built environment. This Universal Design graphic toolkit will specifically consider the larger scale of urban landscapes, filling a void unaddressed by current Universal Design books or landscape architecture-specific resources.”

Congratulations Alexa!