NEW YORK CITY-Handing down its prestigious J.C. Nichols prize for visionaries in urban development for the 13th year, the Urban Land Institute honored a landscape architect for the first time this year. The non-profit organization centered around land use and real estate development bestowed the honor, for 2012, on Peter Walker at its award luncheon on Friday at the Conrad New York.
Walker, who founded PWP Landscape Architecture in Berkeley, CA, was singled out this year as he created the National September 11 Memorial. In a statement to ULI, as printed in its brochure detailing Walker's career—which spans more than five decades—the project's mastermind explained some of the thinking behind his recent, impressive creation.
“In spatial and ecological terms, the site was empty but it had powerful associations,” Walker said. “We tried to find formal ways to explain how absence or emptiness is something.” Walker has been involved in creations around the world, including another New York icon: the Alice in Wonderland sculpture in Central Park. Most recently, he was selected to lead the redevelopment of Constitution Gardens on the National Mall, in Washington DC.
The accomplished designer also served as chairman of the landscape architecture department at Harvard University, where he toiled for over 35 years. Walker was lauded by a former student and peers. Tom Oslund, principal and design director at Oslund.and.assoc—who studied under Walker at Harvard and eventually formed an enduring friendship—called Walker's work “profound and unparalleled.” Oslund also described the honoree as “triple threat” because of his roles as a practitioner, design educator and writer.
Gerald McCue, T. Dunlap professor of housing studies, emeritus, at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, said Walker's projects “create movement and repose,” particularly the 9/11 memorial, and called his friend's propensity with random patterns as giving projects a “human touch.” Friend Joseph Brown, chief innovation officer at AECOM, said Walker inspires him and joked that there's still time for the two landscape architects to collaborate.
When bestowing the award, Amanda Burden, commissioner of the New York City Dept. of city planning, and the 2009 J.C. Nichols prize laureate, declared Walker has
“set a new standard for those of us who care about urban architecture.” She also noted that his win as a landscape architect, “shows the importance of the field.”
In accepting the trophy, Walker said, “We're trying to make spaces that work, are beautiful and—if we have the right client and a bit of a budget—spaces that are memorable.”
Past Nichols prize winners have included the late US Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, affordable housing developer Richard Baron and Chicago Mayor Richard Daley. ULI focuses on industry research and education.
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Rayna Katz
Rayna Katz is a seasoned business journalist whose extensive experience includes coverage of the lodging sector, travel and the culinary space. She was most recently content director for a business-to-business publisher, overseeing four publications. While at Meeting News, a travel trade publication, she received a Best Reporting award for a story on meeting cancellations in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.
