Margaret O. Cekada Memorial Lecture for 2007

Tuesday, April 10, 6:30 pm
Trayes Hall, Douglass Campus Center

Michael Van Valkenburgh
Recent Work

The Rutgers Department of Landscape Architecture
is pleased to announce that the 2007 Margaret O.
Cekada Memorial Lecture will be given by Michael
Van Valkenburgh, principal of Michael Van Valkenburgh
Associates and Charles Eliot Professor in Practice
of Landscape Architecture at the Harvard Graduate
School of Design.

As one critic wrote, "To look at Van Valkenburg's
work is to see a landscape architect coming to
grips with a number of particularly contemporary
challenges. It is to be witness to an effort to
marry an essentially placeless modernist language
with more recent contextual concerns, whether
defined in terms of regionalism or local ecology."

In this talk Mr. Van Valkenburgh will share thoughts
on interpreting and engaging the built environment
in several of his recent projects including Alumnae
Valley on the Wellesley College Campus, which won an
American Society of Landscape Architects Award of
Excellence for 2006. Part of a seven-year reworking
of the campus, the design restores ecological function
to a once-contaminated landscape. The award jury
concluded: "The landscape architect backs up an
understated, sophisticated design with real science.
This project totally transforms the campus and sends
a very strong environmental message. Excellent
planning and execution--truly elegant."

Mr. Van Valkenburgh is a Fellow of the American
Society of Landscape Architects and of the American
Academy in Rome. He was awarded the 2003 National
Design Award in Environmental Design by the
Smithsonian Institution's Cooper-Hewitt Museum and
has been the recipient of grants from numerous
organizations including the Graham Foundation and
the National Endowment for the Arts. He received
a BS in landscape architecture from Cornell University
and an MLA from the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign.

For questions, please contact the Department of
Landscape Architecture at 732-932-9317 or visit the
web site at landarch.rutgers.edu

Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates website . . .
www.mvvainc.com

ASLA Award for Alumnae Valley website . . .
asla.org/awards/2006/06winners/309.html