- Michael Van Valkenburgh
-
Michael R. Van Valkenburgh Born 1951 Occupation Landscape Architect Michael R. Van Valkenburgh (born 1951) is an American landscape architect and educator. He has worked on a wide variety of projects in the United States, Canada, Korea, and France including public parks, college campuses, sculpture gardens, city courtyards, corporate landscapes, and private gardens
Contents
Life and career
Early Years and Schooling
Michael Van Valkenburgh was born in 1951 and grew up in Lexington, New York, where his family owned a small dairy farm. Van Valkenburgh received a Bachelor of Science from the College of Agriculture at Cornell University in 1973, studied photography at the Boston Museum School from 1974–75, and earned a Master of Landscape Architecture from the College of Fine Arts at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1977. In 1979, he started teaching in the Landscape Architecture department at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design. He worked at Carr, Lynch, Associates, Inc., in Cambridge, MA from 1979 until 1982, when he founded his own firm, Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Inc. In the early years of his practice, Van Valkenburgh worked with seasonally dynamic hedge gardens and ice walls. He received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts which allowed him to experiment with ice as a material in landscape design. In 1988, Van Valkenburgh received the Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome.
Teaching career
Michael Van Valkenburgh is the Charles Eliot Professor of Practice at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. His career at the GSD began in 1982, he was program director from 1987–1989, and was the Chairman of the Department of Landscape Architecture from 1991-1996.
Design Approach and Inspiration
Michael Van Valkenburgh describes his work as an exploration of the living qualities of the landscape medium and an attempt to emancipate landscape architecture from a stylistically-based relationship to architecture. His designs are based in an appreciation of the particular qualities of each specific site and thus do not necessarily resemble one another with respect to form, details, or imagery. According to fellow landscape architect James Corner, Van Valkenburgh's work demonstrates "that the knowledge of a place derives more deeply through experience of material, time, and event, than through visuality alone, and that landscape experience is fuller and more profound when it accrues through inhabitation than through the immediacy of the image or the objectification of the new."[1]
M. Van Valkenburgh was influenced by his youth in an agricultural setting and his education at Cornell University during the 1970's, particularly the ground-breaking book Design with Nature, written by Ian McHarg. This book explains the ecological movement of man made landscapes becoming a fusion of nature as art and conscience. Van Valkenburgh has been acknowledged for his ability to successfully integrate new methods of sustainable design and ecological renewal into the experience of the places he designs, making sustainability part of the beauty of a place that educates visitors and raises environmental awareness.[2]
He frequently credits artist Robert Smithson's writings on Frederick Law Olmsted and the "landscape dialectic" as a source of inspiration.[3] Van Valkenburgh's landscapes are sometimes completely original explorations of naturalism and the constructed urban landscape, for instance at Teardrop Park, or Brooklyn Bridge Park, but he has also completed many sensitive historic landscape restorations including Harvard Yard, Marion Square Park in Charleston, South Carolina, and several works at Wellesley College. According to noted landscape theorist Anita Berrizbeitia, in her introduction to a book of essays on the work of MVVA, "His parks and public open spaces are based on the conviction that not only can the power of nature and the power of the man-made coexist, but they are the better for doing so."[4]
Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Inc.
Michael Van Valkenburgh founded Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Inc. (MVVA) in 1982. He currently leads the firm with his two fellow principals, Laura Solano and Matthew Urbanski. The company is a successful Landscape Architecture firm based in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Brooklyn, New York. Since the company was founded it has completed a broad range of landscape design, construction, and restoration projects in both the public and private realms. To date, MVVA has completed over 350 projects and has won numerous national awards from the American Society of Landscape Architects. MVVA is known for their knowledge concerning issues of sustainability, challenges of soil toxicity, and maintaining the integrity of a designs history and context. The firm also collaborates frequently with artists. M. Van Valkenburgh and MVVA have won many national awards for their designs.
Some of these awards include:
- Honor Award from the Boston Society of Landscape Architects for Mill Race Park in Columbus, Indiana, 1993
- Design Merit Award, ASLA for the Vera List Courtyard at the New School for Social Research, New York, NY, 1998
- Planning and Analysis Merit Award, ASLA, for Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA 1999
- Citation from Progressive Architecture for Allegheny Riverfront Park in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 2002
- Design Merit Award, ASLA, Allegheny Riverfront Park, Pittsburgh, PA, 2002
- Places Magazine/EDRA Place Design Award, Allegheny Riverfront Park, Pittsburgh, PA, 2002
- Design Merit Award, ASLA, Spider Island, Chicago Botanic Garden, Glenncoe, IL, 2002
- Environmental Design Award, National Design Awards, Smithsonian Institution's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, 2003
- Design Merit Award, ASLA, for the Garden on Turtle Creek, Dallas, TX 2004
- Juror, for World Trade Center Memorial Competition 2004
- Design Honor Award, ASLA, for the Herman Miller Factory Landscape, Cherokee County, GA 2005
- Design Honor Award, ASLA, for Tahari Courtyards, Millburn, NJ, 2006
- Design Excellence Award, ASLA, for Alumnae Valley at Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA, 2006
- Design Honor Award, ASLA, for Boston Children Museum's Entry Plaza, 2008
- Special Jury Award for Sustainable Development from the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada’s Urban Design Awards for the Lower Don Lands Project in Toronto, ON, 2008
- Analysis and Planning Honor Award, ASLA, for the Lower Don Lands Project in Toronto, ON, 2008
- Design Honor Award, ASLA, for Teardrop Park in New York, NY, 2009
- Analysis and Planning Honor Award, ASLA, for Brooklyn Bridge Park in Brooklyn, NY 2009
- National Park Service “Designing the Parks” Honor Award for Teardrop Park, New York, NY, 2010
- National Park Service “Designing the Parks” Honor Award for Brooklyn Bridge Park 2005 Master Plan, Brooklyn, NY, 2010
- Design Honor Award, ASLA, Connecticut Water Treatment Plant Landscape, New Haven, CT, 2010
Recent Information
Today Michael Van Valkenburgh is continuing the legacy through his design and his teaching. He has a National Council of Landscape Architectural Registration Board certification and is a registered Landscape Architect in twenty different states. He currently listed as a potential designer for the National Museum of Gardens. In 2003, Van Valkenburgh served on the selection jury of the World Trade Center Site Memorial Competition and won the National Design Award in Environmental Design by the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. M. Van Valkenburgh was thanked by Mrs. Laura Bush for his design for the renovation of Pennsylvania Avenue in November 2004. In 2007 Michael Van Valkenburgh was asked to present the Rutgers Department of Landscape Architecture Margaret O. Cekada Memorial Lecture. In 2010, he was awarded the Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize in Architecture by the American Academy of Arts and letters, for contributions to architecture as an art. Also in 2011, Van Valkenburgh was awarded the Brendan Gill Prize (annual prize given to work of art that best captures the spirit and energy of New York City) for the design of Brooklyn Bridge Park from the Municipal Arts Society of New York City.
Publications
- Taking Measures Across the American Landscape
M. Van Valkenburgh, A. S. MacLean, J. Corner
- Ten Landscapes
Stephen Stimson Associates M. Van Valkenburgh, J. Amidon, J. Trulove, C. Mayer Rockport Publishers; 2002
- American landscape architecture
in: Space design M. Schwartz, P. Walker, G. Hargreaves, M. Van Valkenburgh, S. R. Frey, S. Miyagi
- Best laid plan: Gertrude Jekyll's brilliant planting and Edwin Lutyen's architectural mastery make Hestercombe a superb example of collaborative garden design
in: House & Garden M. Van Valkenburgh, C. D. Van Valkenburgh
- The Flower gardens of Gertrude Jekyll and their twentieth-century transformations
in: Design quarterly, M. Van Valkenburgh
- Michael
J. Gilette, Landscape Architecture Magazine, February 1998
- The Active Edge
A. Blum, Metropolis, March 2006
- Built Landscapes: Gardens in the Northeast
M. Van Valkenburgh, Brattleboro Museum & Art Center, 1984
- Design with the Land: Landscape Architecture of Michael Van Valkenburgh
M. Van Valkenburgh, with essays by Peter Rose, Will Miller, James Corner, Paula Deitz, John Beardsley, and Mildred Friedman, Princeton Architectural Press, 1994
- Michael Van Valkenburgh/Allegheny Riverfront Park: Source Books in Landscape Architecture
J. Amidon, Princeton Architectural Press, 2005
- Green Roof - A Case Study: Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates' Design for the Headquarters of the American Society of Landscape Architects
C. Werthmann, Princeton Architectural Press, 2007
- Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates: Reconstructing Urban Landscapes
A. Berrizbeitia, with essays by Jane Amidon, Ethan Carr, Rachel Gleeson, Linda Pollak, Erik de Jong, Andrew Blum, Elissa Rosenberg, Peter Fergusson, forward by Paul Goldberger, Yale University Press, 2009
- Built Landscapes, Ecologies and Re-defining "Preservation"
in CRM: The Journal of Heritage Stewardship, National Park Service, Volume 7, Number 2, Summer 2010, M. Van Valkenburgh
Notable works
A list of notable works by Michael Van Valkenburgh and his company Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, with their completion dates follows:
- Regis Garden, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1988
- Radcliffe Ice Walls, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1988
- Garden on Lake Minnetonka, Wayzata Minnesota, 1989
- Krakow Ice Garden, Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, 1990
- Pucker Garden, Brookline, Massachusetts, 1990
- General Mills Sculpture Garden, Minneapolis, 1991 (destroyed 2000)
- Redesign of The Jardin Des Tuileries, Paris, France, 1991
- Mill Race Park, Columbus, Indiana, 1993
- 50 Avenue Montaigne Courtyard, Paris, France, 1993
- Oakville Park Completion, Oakville, Ontario, Canada, 1993
- Ho-Am Art Museum and Sculpture Garden, Seoul, South Korea, 1993
- Vera List Courtyard, New School University, New York, New York 1997
- Allegheny Riverfront Park, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1998
- Garden on Turtle Creek, Dallas, Texas, 1999
- Spider Island, Chicago Botanic Garden, Glencoe, Illinois, 2000
- Herman Miller Factory Landscape, Cherokee County, Georgia, 2001
- Marion Square Park, Charleston, South Carolina, 2002
- Straightsview Farm, San Juan Island, Washington, 2003
- Harvard Yard Restoration, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2003
- Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts, 2003
- Tahari Courtyards, Millburn, New Jersey, 2003
- Kraus Campo, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 2003
- Renovation of Pennsylvania Avenue at the White House, Washington DC, 2004
- Nomentana Garden, Stoneham, Maine, 2005
- Alumnae Valley, Wellesley College, Wellesley, Massachusetts, 2005
- Lake Whitney Water Treatment Plant, New Haven, Connecticut, 2005
- Teardrop Park in Battery Park City, New York NY, 2006
- Bailey Plaza, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, 2007
- Smith Family Waterfront Park, Boston Children's Museum, Boston, Massachusetts, 2007
- Union Square Park, North End Plaza and Playground, New York, NY, 2010
- Segment 5 (Piers 62-64), Hudson River Park, New York, NY, 2010
- Pier 1, Brooklyn Bridge Park, Brooklyn, NY, 2010
- BJC Institute of Health Plaza (with Maya Lin), Washington University, St Louis, MO, 2010
- Pier 6 Playground, Brooklyn Bridge Park, Brooklyn, NY 2010
- Teardrop Park South, New York, NY, 2010
Competition Wins
- Pennsylvania Avenue at the White House, Washington, DC, 2002 (completed)
- Lower Don Lands Design Competition, Port Lands Estuary, Toronto, ON, 2007,[5] (in progress) [6]
- The City + The Arch + The River Competition, Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, St. Louis, Missouri, 2010, to redesign the grounds around the Gateway Arch,[7] (in progress)
Image Links
Video Links
See also
References
- ^ Design with the Land, Landscape Architecture of Michael Van Valkenburgh. New York: Harvard Graduate School of Design, Princeton Architectural Press. 1994. pp. 5–8. ISBN 1-56898-022-1.
- ^ Meyer, Elizabeth K. (2008). "Sustaining Beauty, The Performance of Appearance, a Manifesto in Three Parts". Journal of Landscape Architecture Spring (1): 6–23.
- ^ Ouroussoff, Nicolai (April 2, 2010). "The Greening of the Waterfront". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/02/arts/design/02bridge.html. Retrieved 5 May 2011.
- ^ Berrizbeitia, Anita (2009). Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Reconstructing Urban Landscapes. New Haven: Yale University Press. pp. 7. ISBN 978-0-300-13585.
- ^ Hume, Christopher (9 May 2007). "A winning vision for the Lower Don". The Star (Toronto). http://www.thestar.com/article/211866.
- ^ http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/July2010/09/c3407.html
- ^ http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/article_ccccaf5a-c5ba-11df-ae53-00127992bc8b.html
- Design With The Land. Princeton Architectural Press, Inc. Copyright 1994.
- Variety of Information
- MVVA
- Harvard Teaching Profile
- Short Biography and description of works
- Search engine
External links
Categories:- 1951 births
- American landscape architects
- Cornell University alumni
- Harvard University faculty
- University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign alumni
- Living people
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
