University of Guelph - Landscape Architecture Guest Lecture Series presents:

Walter Hood, Creative Director and Founder of Hood Design Studio [1].  Professor of Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning and Urban Design [2], UC Berkeley.

"Recent Works"

Image:  Walter Hood

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.

Walter creates urban spaces that resonate with and enrich the lives of current residents while also honoring communal histories. Hood melds architectural and fine arts expertise with a commitment to designing ecologically sustainable public spaces that empower marginalized communities. Over his career, he has transformed traffic islands, vacant lots, and freeway underpasses into spaces that challenge the legacy of neglect of urban neighborhoods. Through engagement with community members, he teases out the natural and social histories as well as current residents' shared patterns and practices of use and aspirations for a place.

The Studio's award-winning work has been featured in publications including Dwell, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Fast Company, Architectural Digest, Places Journal, and Landscape Architecture Magazine. Walter 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.

Lecture kindly supported by the Vandergrift Fund.  All welcome to attend.  

Contact:  Landscape Architecture Guest Lecture Coordinator:  Nadia Amoroso [3], Associate Professor. 
Videoconference link to the lecture for external individuals:  please contact our W22 Speaker Series Student Assistant: Tatijana Vukovic [4].