Announcing the Inaugural Jury of the Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize
Media Contact: Nord Wennerstrom | T: 202.483.0553 | M: 202.255.7076 | E: nord@tclf.org
The Cultural Landscape Foundation Announces Dorothée Imbert is the inaugural jury chair
Washington, D.C. (April 27, 2021) – The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF) today announced the members of the inaugural jury of the Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Prize. The seven-member jury includes leading landscape architects, urban planners, architects, academics, and other experts from around the world: Dorothée Imbert (jury chair); Tatiana Bilbao; Michel Desvigne; Gina Ford; Teresa Gali-Izard; Walter Hood; and Aki Omi. A pool of potential jurors was developed and ranked by an independent Oberlander Prize Advisory Committee and the inaugural jury members were invited by Oberlander Prize Curator John Beardsley to participate. The inaugural laureate, who will receive a $100,000 award and whose work will be the focus of two years of public engagement activities, will be announced in Fall 2021.
Members of the inaugural Oberlander Prize Jury:
Dorothée Imbert (chair), holds the Hubert C. Schmidt ’38 Chair in landscape architecture and is the Director of the Knowlton School at The Ohio State University. She has taught at Harvard University and Washington University in St. Louis.
Imbert has published extensively on landscape modernism, contemporary practice, and productive landscapes. She authored the books Between Garden and City: Jean Canneel-Claes and Landscape Modernism (2009), Garrett Eckbo: Modern Landscapes for Living (with Marc Treib, 2005), The Modernist Garden in France (1993), and was the editor of A Landscape Inventory: Michel Desvigne Paysagiste (2018) and Food and the City: Histories of Culture and Cultivation (2015). More recently, Imbert’s research has focused on the politics of landscape. Imbert has served on numerous boards and juries, including Dumbarton Oaks and the Society of Architectural Historians and practiced at Peter Walker and Partners. She continues to engage in research and design practice and recently completed the Square (with Andrew Cruse), a landscape on structure for the Novartis campus in Basel, Switzerland. She received her architect's diploma from the Unité Pédagogique d'Architecture nº 1 in Paris and holds MArch and MLA degrees from the University of California, Berkeley. Knowlton School, Ohio State University.
“I am both honored and thrilled to take part in this jury,” said Dorothée Imbert. “The prize will bring a much-delayed recognition of landscape architecture’s shaping of the environment across spatial and temporal scales. I anticipate that over the years the award will increase the visibility of landscape architecture as a profession and as a driver in the discourse on a more equitable future.”
Tatiana Bilbao, based in Mexico City, Mexico, began her eponymous studio in 2004 with the aim of integrating social values, collaboration and sensitive design approaches to architectural work. Prior to founding her firm, Bilbao was an Advisor in the Ministry of Development and Housing of the Government of the Federal District of Mexico City, during this period she was part of the General Development Directorate of the Advisory Council for Urban Development in the City. The work of the office intersects with research allowing to design for diverse circumstances and in reconstruction or crisis scenarios.
Bilbao holds a recurring teaching position at Yale University School of Architecture and has taught at Harvard University GSD, AA Association in London, Columbia University GSAPP, Rice University, University of Andrés Bello in Chile, and Peter Behrens School of Arts at HS Dusseldorf in Germany. Her work has been published in The New York Times, A + U, Domus, among others. Bilbao has been recognized with the Kunstpreis Berlin in 2012, was named in 2010 as an Emerging Voice by the Architecture League of New York, the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture Prize by the LOCUS Foundation in 2014, as well as the Impact Award 2017 Honorees for ArchitzierA + Awards, Tau Sigma Delta Gold Medal of 2020 and the Marcus Prize Award 2019. Tatiana Bilbao ESTUDIO.
“Like everything today, the way we give prizes should be rethought to understand what is the message you give,” said Tatiana Bilbao. “The sole idea of the prize to me now sounds even anachronistic, but with this background I thought could be a good place to get involved and understand how to open a new form and possibility.”
Michel Desvigne, located in Paris, France, is a landscape architect internationally renowned for his rigorous and contemporary designs and for the originality and relevance of his research work. He has developed projects in more than twenty-five countries, where his work helps in highlighting the landscapes and rendering them visible, in understanding the mechanisms at work giving them form, and in acting upon these mechanisms in order to transform the landscapes and imbue them with meaning. Among Michel Desvigne’s most renowned awards are 2020 Equerre d’Argent - public space, 2019 AIA Honor Award for Detroit East Riverfront Framework Plan (US), 2014 European Prize for Urban Public Space and 2011 France's Grand Prize for Urbanism for his continual contribution to and reflection upon the city and larger territory. Michel Desvigne Paysagiste.
Gina Ford is a landscape architect, co-founder, and principal of Agency Landscape + Planning, Cambridge, MA. Underpinning her two decades of practice are a commitment to the design and planning of public places and the perpetuation of the value of landscape architecture via thought leadership, teaching, writing, and lecturing. Her work has received awards from the American Society of Landscape Architects, the American Planning Association, and the American Institute of Architects, among others. Her service includes roles on the board of directors for the Cultural Landscape Foundation and the City Parks Alliance. Gina is the recipient of the Harvard Graduate School of Design’s Charles Eliot Traveling Fellowship and Wellesley College’s Shaw Fellowship. Agency Landscape + Planning.
“I'm excited to be part of this very important inaugural prize jury,” said Gina Ford. “It's an incredible opportunity - through its award - to position landscape architecture as a force for positive change and a powerful tool for advancing many of the most critical issues of today: environmental resilience and cultural vitality chief among them. And the inaugural jury is an exceptional array of change makers, bold designers and deep thinkers. Let’s do it!”
Teresa Gali-Izard, a principal of Barcelona, Spain-based ARQUITECTURA AGRONOMIA, is a landscape architect interested in finding a methodology to translate the hidden potential of places, by engaging a conversation with other fields. She is exploring new languages that integrate other living creatures, their life forms and their milieux in our shared environments. Gali-Izard is seeking new logics of design more open, inclusive and based in processes and relationships.
She is Professor and Chair of Being Alive, at the Department of Architecture ETH Zurich, in Switzerland, and previously taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, as Associate professor and was the Chair at the Department of Landscape Architecture at University of Virginia.
The restauration of the Sant Joan Landfield, and the Passeig de Sant Joan in Barcelona are the firm's most celebrated projects, among others, such as Parque de los Primeros pasos in Caracas, Venezuela, Giner de los Rios Garden in Madrid, Logrono train station park, or the Cantarell Garden in Spain. ARQUITECTURA AGRONOMIA.
“I seek to have an open and honest interchange of ideas and point of views in the process of discovering new people and practices around the world,” said Teresa Gali-Izard. “In this process, I hope to be able to celebrate the complexity and the challenges of our profession nowadays and in the years to come. A quasi-impossible task that I will do with a fresh open mind, a lot of rigor and creativity.”
Walter Hood is the Creative Director and Founder of Hood Design Studio in Oakland, California. Hood Design Studio is a cultural practice, working across art, fabrication, design, landscape, research and urbanism. He is also the David K. Woo Chair and the Professor of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning at the University of California, Berkeley. He lectures on and exhibits professional and theoretical projects nationally and internationally. He was recently the Spring 2020 Diana Balmori Visiting Professor at the Yale School of Architecture and the Spring 2021 Senior Loeb Scholar for the Harvard GSD Loeb Fellowship.
Hood is also a recipient of the 2017 Academy of Arts and Letters Architecture Award, 2019 Knight Foundation Public Spaces Fellowship, 2019 MacArthur Fellowship, 2019 Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize and most recently, the 2021 United States Artists Fellowship. Hood is also a Fellow at the American Academy of Rome and one of the 2021 elected members of the Academy of Arts and Letters. Hood Design Studio has also been featured in the 2021 AD 100 list. Hood Design Studio.
"Excited to be part of an international jury tasked with such an important endeavor, selecting the inaugural Cornelia Oberlander Prize recipient,” said Walter Hood.
Aki Omi, founder + creative director @ office ma, in Tokyo, Japan, and San Francisco, CA, is an entrepreneur, conceptual guy, urbanist, sculptor, landscape designer, and culturally mixed/hybrid of Japanese x American. He is the founder and creative director at a boutique design studio called office ma. As the word “ma” suggests, his work focuses on discovering of “ma: the void with unlimited opportunities” which often exists within the gaps created by conventional thinkers and practitioners. His current work involved conceptualization of place-making, urban design/planning, landscape design, and traveling to Asia. office ma.
“We live in a society and era where the virtual and the real co-exist, and we move between them simultaneously and effortlessly,” said Aki Omi. “Everything seems to happen either instantly or has been there forever, while the intent, processes and story behind them are getting lost. Landscape is no exception to this phenomenon. My hope is that this prize will help to capture the essence of what we do by revealing one practitioner’s story (whether an individual or collaborative) and shine a light on the profession as a whole.”
About the Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize
The Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Prize was established in 2019 by TCLF and is the only prize of its kind that includes a U.S.$100,000 award and two years of public engagement activities. The principal goal of the Prize is to elevate the art and profession of landscape architecture. The New York Times calls Cornelia Hahn Oberlander, the Prize’s namesake, the “grande dame” of landscape 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.
Artwork available – contact nord@tclf.org.
# # #