Charles A. Birnbaum FASLA, FAAR

Founder and President
The Cultural Landscape Foundation

Mr. Birnbaum is the Founder and President of The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF). Prior to joining TCLF, Mr. Birnbaum spent fifteen years as the coordinator of the National Park Service Historic Landscape Initiative (HLI) and a decade in private practice in New York City with a focus on landscape preservation and urban design. His recent projects include two web-based initiatives: What’s Out There? (A searchable database of the nation’s designed landscape heritage) and Cultural Landscapes as Classrooms. He has authored and edited numerous publications including Shaping the American Landscape (UVA Press, 2009). In 1995 the ASLA awarded the HLI the President's Award of Excellence and in 1996 inducted Mr. Birnbaum as a Fellow of the Society. He served as a Loeb Fellow at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design during which time he founded TCLF. In 2004 Mr. Birnbaum was awarded the Rome Prize in Historic Preservation and Conservation and spent spring/summer of that year at the American Academy in Rome. In 2008 the ASLA awarded Mr. Birnbaum the Alfred B. LaGasse Medal and then the President’s Medal the following year. He is currently a Visiting Professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture Planning + Preservation and a frequent blogger for The Huffington Post.

Sketch of Benjamin Franklin Parkway in L'Architecture aux Etats-Unis by Jacques Greber, 1920