Diana Balmori

Born in Gijón, Spain, Balmori studied architecture at the National University of Tucumán, in Argentina, before immigrating to the United States. She continued her studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, graduating with a B.A. in 1970 and earning a Ph.D. in urban history, also from UCLA, in 1973. Balmori then accepted a position at the State University of New York at Oswego, where she taught urban history for six years. After earning a certificate in landscape architecture from Radcliffe College in 1989, she established an in-house landscape architecture department at Cesar Pelli & Associates, her husband’s architecture firm. Balmori left the firm in 1991 to establish her own practice, Balmori Associates. Her designs focused on the integration of nature and structure and the creation of low-impact, regenerative landscapes. In 2006 she established BalmoriLABS, a department within her firm, to explore the relationships among architecture, art, and technology through the creation of green spaces, that included floating islands and green roofs. She practiced both domestically and abroad, including terraces at the Washington National Airport (since renamed the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport) in Washington, D.C., the Prairie Waterway Stormwater Park in Farmington, Minnesota, and the National Museum of Art in Osaka, Japan. Another major project in 2002, following the tragic events of September 11 the prior year was the restoration of the Winter Garden at the World Financial Center, within Battery Park City in New York City. Balmori was a regular lecturer at Yale University’s School of Architecture and School of Forestry. She contributed to numerous publications, including coauthoring the books Beatrix Farrand, American Landscapes: Garden and Campus Designs (1985), Redesigning the American Lawn (1993) and Groundwork: Between Landscape and Architecture (2011). In 2011 she was named a Fellow of the American Society of American Landscape Architects. She died at the age of 84.