Word: valkenburgh
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Educated at Cornell University and the University of Illlinois, Van Valkenburgh has been at the GSD for more than 20 years. After graduate school, he began teaching at the Radcliffe Seminars in Landscape Architecture. By 1988, he was a tenured professor at the GSD and eventually became the chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture...
During the same period, his Cambridge office became distinguished for its professional work. A 1988 project in the Radcliffe Quadrangle, a series of mesh screens that became “ice walls” when the temperature dropped below freezing, was a result of innovative research Van Valkenburgh conducted to understand ice as a potential medium in landscape architecture. The ice walls were exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art’s “Light Architecture” exhibition...
This quality of Van Valkenburgh’s work is also apparent at the center of campus, as he has directed the restoration of Harvard Yard over the past decade. Many of the original trees were ravaged by Dutch elm disease, so Van Valkenburgh has guided the careful replanting and replanning of this space. In addition to adding more resilient trees, his firm has modernized the system of paths and removed vegetation inappropriately planted at the base of many buildings...
...Valkenburgh received an honor award from the National Trust for Historic Preservation for this restoration, which blends into the existing landscape and represents the antithesis of the sort of project that trumpets the artist?...
...ability of Van Valkenburgh, and the jury, to recede from the center of attention was important as they worked with finalists to refine ideas before selecting a winner. “What happened was the eight teams came in November, and we were kind of universally aghast, we were quite disappointed…the reason we had eight schemes was that there were so many different favorites among the jury,” Van Valkenburgh says...