Board members had also considered another idea: a multi-institution studio that responded to the Green New Deal legislation. Fleming, Weller, and Orff had overseen successful Green New Deal–related studios at their respective universities. But the breadth of the legislation and its issues had challenged them. An open-invite studio would crowdsource the effort, allowing students and professionals across the country to break off and process pieces of the Green New Deal. Deutsch found the idea compelling, which left only the LAF board’s approval. And as far as LAF or anyone knew, the growing epidemic would recede in weeks. By the time the Green New Deal Superstudio officially launched in August 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic had placed the academic and social landscape under tremendous strain.  

“It was a bit of a leap of faith putting it out there,” Orff, who is also the founding principal of SCAPE (where the author is a landscape designer), said of the Superstudio’s launch five months into the pandemic. Megan Barnes, ASLA, a program manager at LAF, said that she and Deutsch were uncertain whether they would attract “10 or 50” participating studios. “We planned for 50.” Between March and July of 2020, Deutsch and her team formalized partnerships with the McHarg Center, CRCL, the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture (CELA), and the American Society of Landscape Architects. With LAF spearheading, the partners developed the Superstudio program, built a website, and attracted interest among a group consisting primarily of undergraduate and graduate design students and their instructors. The Superstudio launched August 1, and LAF hosted an informational webinar later that month attended by more than 600 viewers. By the following spring, the Superstudio had 105 participating studios, including those from 66 accredited landscape architecture programs. “It was way more than we expected,” Barnes said. [...]

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