The Center for Cultural Landscapes Announces 2026 David R. Coffin Publication Grant Recipient
Image
The Center for Cultural Landscapes (CCL) at the UVA School of Architecture is pleased to announce that architect and urban designer Adriana E. Cuéllar is the recipient of the 2026 David R. Coffin Publication Grant for her book, Border Ecologies: Aquí/Allá.
In this book, Cuéllar and other contributing authors explore the potential of landscape representation as a generative approach to design inquiry. Grounded in site-based research in the Cañada de los Sauces Norte, a canyon landscape at the U.S.–Mexico border, and expanding outward through border territories and into broader global contexts, the book positions the Tijuana River Watershed as an analytical framework through which territorial transformation and border exchange are made legible. Where conventional representational approaches treat landscape as context or backdrop, this work demonstrates how landscape operates as a method of investigation, tracing relationships between human settlement, ecological processes, and infrastructure across scales and jurisdictions in a way that resists conventional planning and design frameworks.
The $3500 Coffin grant awarded by CCL will enable publisher ORO Editions to support image preparation, high-quality reproduction, and professional indexing to improve the clarity and consistency of visual material, ensuring the book will function as a durable scholarly resource.
Adriana Cuéllar is an Associate Professor in the Department of Art, Architecture, and Art History at the University of San Diego (USD) where she has taught since 2012. She is a founder of the Border Design Lab at USD and is co-partner of collaborative research and outreach architecture firm CRO Studio. Adriana received her Bachelor of Architecture from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and a Master's in Design Studies from Harvard University Graduate School of Design. She is a recipient of the Rome Prize Fellowship in Design by the American Academy in Rome.
ABOUT THE COFFIN GRANT
The David R. Coffin Publication Grant is awarded to an author or publisher of a book-in-progress on a landscape subject. The purpose of this prize is to reward contributors to the intellectual vitality of garden history and landscape studies. For more information on how to apply for the 2027 Coffin publication grant, visit: www.arch.virginia.edu/ccl/coffin-publication-grant
ABOUT THE UVA CENTER FOR CULTURAL LANDSCAPES (CCL)
Founded in 2015, The Center for Cultural Landscapes (CCL) at the University of Virginia’s School of Architecture produces research and creates new models of innovative cultural landscape stewardship in the region, the nation, and around the globe. CCL’s work focuses on increasing awareness of the historical, ecological, and social value of cultural landscapes through innovative scholarly research, site documentation and fieldwork, planning, preservation, management, and design. For more information about CCL, visit: www.arch.virginia.edu/ccl
ABOUT ORO EDITIONS
ORO Editions publishes a wide range of highly acclaimed, award-winning illustrated books specializing in architecture, urbanism, landscape, art photography, academia & applied research along with a growing list of culturally stimulating disciplines and topics. ORO Editions and its imprints are widely recognized and admired for superb quality and excellent production values, continuing to push the limits of what can be achieved in the timeless realm of print media. The hands on craftsman approach to bespoke publications and an intense focus on creating “objet’ d’art,” supercedes the capabilities of typical commercial publishers and embraces the cutting edge of what is possible to achieve in the printing and binding mediums of book-making.
