Ann E. Komara (honoris causa)
Professor Ann E. Komara, RLA, completed her MLA at the University of Virginia in 1984 and began teaching in landscape architecture in 1986 while working at EDSA Associates. She commenced thirty plus years as a full-time educator with positions at Rutgers and Penn State. She began teaching at University of Colorado in 1991 as an adjunct lecturer while in practice with Civitas, Inc.. Since then, she has mentored countless graduate students and taught studios, landscape history, and seminars exploring topics ranging from landscape reception to advanced plants. She served as Department Chair from 2009-2019. Early on at UCD she has developed site documentation and cultural landscape studies focused around Denver. In 2008 her summer studio in northwestern Pennsylvania documented Civilian Conservation Corps Camp ANF-1, for which she and her ten students received recognition – a 1st place in the 2014 NPS HALS Documentation Challenge. Her documentation with students and research on Lawrence Halprin and Satura Nishita and their work on Denver’s Skyline Park in the 1970s became the first HALS for the State of Colorado and the first nationally recognized documentation of a mid-century modern landscape in the nation and led to an award winning book. Ann has been a Fulbright Scholar to Finland, recipient of a Graham Foundation Fellowship, and a Garden and Landscape Studies Fellow at Dumbarton Oaks (summer 2004; AY 2019-20) where she pursued research leading to publications on the urban landscapes of Second Empire Paris.
Statement: Ann’s decades of work as a mentor, professor, writer and researcher has inspired dozens of graduate students in landscape architecture, planning and architecture as well as the Colorado community, and scholars, historians and designers across the country. Many have benefitted from her theoretical inquiries, analytical processes and thinking, and most of all from her love of landscape. Ann’s mentoring of young women in the fields of historic preservation and landscape architecture has had an enormous influence in elevating our profession. This gift is from the many women who have been inspired and influenced by Ann and in recognition of her decades of intellectual inquiry that has driven us all to excel.
—Tina Bishop, March 26, 2021