TCLF Announces Soak It Up: Los Angeles—Designing For Urban Flooding—Managing The Los Angeles River—Daylong Conference In Los Angeles, Dec. 5

• Features international Oberlander Prize winner Kongjian Yu, global “sponge cities” champion
• Opening reception Thu. Dec. 4 at SWA Los Angeles studio & mobile workshops Sat. Dec. 6

The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF), a Washington, D.C.-based education and advocacy non-profit, today announced Soak It Up: Los Angeles, a daylong conference Friday, December 5, 2025, at the Bovard Auditorium at the University of Southern California. The event will focus on landscape architecture’s leadership role in addressing critical urban flooding and water management issues and includes international leaders in the landscape architecture profession, as well as academics, critics, and journalists who will address current challenges and solutions in Los Angeles, along with global perspectives and strategies. The event is organized in partnership with the University of Southern California (USC) and the SWA Group; The American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) Southern California chapter is a partner in education. The conference will be preceded by a reception on Thursday, December 4 at the SWA Group Los Angeles studio featuring an opening keynote by Lauren Bon, Metabolic Studio, and followed on Saturday, December 6 by mobile workshops at multiple locations. Complete details about the program, speakers, speaker abstracts, and early bird pricing are available on the event registration page. LACES credits will be available, pending approval.

This event is part of the programming associated with the Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize, a biennial honor with a $100,000 award. The work of the current laureate, the Beijing-based landscape architect Kongjian Yu, which centers on the “sponge cities” concept for mitigating urban flooding, is the impetus for the conference. The “sponge cities” concept has captured the attention of and is being implemented by landscape architects, urban planners, elected officials, and other key decision-makers around the world.

Recognizing the unprecedented and more frequent climate events that have taken place in Southern California (and internationally); public and private sector interest in exploring sponge cities as a water management tool; the need to tame the Los Angeles River; and, perhaps most critically, the successful voter’s measure that approved “Measure W,” which generates $300M annually to capture and treat stormwater for water security and improve water quality, Los Angeles is an ideal laboratory to explore advancing water management and design strategies through a contemporary landscape architecture lens. Taken together, positioning Los Angeles municipalities to become “Water First” cities where water infrastructure is an integral part of creating nature-based solutions for people and nature to co-exist.

Panels will look at how the Los Angeles River and water sources, more broadly, have been managed, and the current challenges and solutions being implemented; and, at global strategies and perspectives offered by international leaders in the field, including Oberlander Prize winner Kongjian Yu.

Soak It Up: Los Angeles is made possible by Lead Sponsors PlayCore and SWA; Presenting Sponsors OLIN and West 8; numerous Supporting Sponsors; and Educational Partners the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA), ASLA Southern California, and the USC School of Architecture.

About The Cultural Landscape Foundation
The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF), is a 501(c)(3) non-profit founded in 1998 to connect people to places. TCLF educates and engages the public to make our shared landscape heritage more visible, identify its value, and empower its stewards. Through its website, publishing, lectures, and other events, TCLF broadens support and understanding for cultural landscapes. TCLF is also home to the Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize.