2023 Boston ASLA Excellence Award Winner: The Ellen DeGeneres Campus for the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund

May 1, 2023

The Ellen DeGeneres Campus of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund has been recognized by the Boston Society of Landscape Architects with the 2023 BSLA Excellence Award!

Opened in 2022, the purpose-built campus at the base of Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park provides the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund with a permanent home to work towards their mission of conservation. Local labor and materials were used throughout design and construction to minimize the campus footprint, develop an immersive reforested landscape, and ensure job training and economic return to the local community.

Working with our partners at MASS Design Group, we transformed an agricultural plot with invasive grasses and eucalyptus trees into a reforested landscape with over 250,000 native species to support native ecologies and plant communities found in Volcanoes National Park.

Four main ecologies—mixed Afromontane forest, Arundinaria bamboo forest, Hagenia-Hypericum forest, and Afromontane meadow—now serve as a precedent for future reforestation efforts. Interpretive trails across campus showcase the flora of the surrounding mountain range, while allowing researchers to monitor the evolution of local plants and the effects of climate change.

Client: The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund

Team: TEN x TEN, MASS Design Group, Local Projects, Buro Happold, Transsolar, AEGIS Development Solutions, TECHNO Engineering Company, Oak Consulting Group, Formula D Interactive, HabitatXR, Sherwood Design Engineers, Jacques Nsengiyumva, Sheffield