Michael Van Valkenburgh, FASLA, FAAR

Mr. Van Valkenburgh is the founding principal of Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Inc., Landscape Architects, a firm of 55 staff members, with offices in New York and in Cambridge, MA.  Throughout his work as a designer, professional, and educator, he has championed the experiential potential of the living landscape and its emancipation from an architecturally derived abstraction that saps landscape of its own identity that, like all art forms, must derive from its inherent, unique qualities.  Van Valkenburgh’s research into the roots of landscape modernism has included a Dumbarton Oaks traveling fellowship to visit the works of Dan Kiley (1973) and curation of the 1984 show “Built Landscapes: Gardens in the Northeast,” which featured the diverse work of Dan Kiley, A.E. Bye, James Rose, Fletcher Steele, and Beatrix Farrand.  He is currently the Charles Eliot Professor in Practice of Landscape Architecture at the Harvard University School of Design, where he has taught since 1982 and has refocused his teaching on the core design sequence.  Van Valkenburgh lives in New York City.

Maze Plaza and Milk Bottle Plaza at the Boston Children’s Museum, Boston, MA; Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Inc., landscape architects.
(Photo: Elizabeth Felicella)