Marvin I. Adleman Memorial Lecture: Walter Hood

The Department of Landscape Architecture is proud to welcome Walter Hood, who will deliver the 2021 Professor Marvin I. Adleman Memorial Lecture. This virtual lecture is open to the public.

Speaker Bio:

Walter Hood is the Founder and Creative Director of Hood Design Studio of Oakland, CA, a cultural practice, working across art, fabrication, design, landscape, research, and urbanism. Hood, a 2019 recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant, is the David K. Woo Chair and the Professor of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning at the University of California, Berkeley. Walter and his studio create 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.

Adleman Memorial Lecture

The annual Adleman Memorial Lecture is endowed by Cornell landscape architecture alumnus Michael R. Van Valkenburgh ('73) and his wife, Caroline, in honor of the late Marvin I. Adleman, professor emeritus of landscape architecture.

"Professor Adleman was a giant in the field of landscape architecture, and it is fitting that a luminary like Michael Van Valkenburgh would name a lecture series in his honor," said Timothy Baird, professor and chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture.