For the first time ever, the Urban Land Institute will award its highest honor to a landscape architect. Peter Walker, FASLA, founding partner of PWP Landscape Architecture, will receive the ULI J.C. Nichols Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development at the institute’s conference this week in Denver.
The award, chosen by a jury of developers and architects, recognizes Walker’s influence as both a designer and an educator. Walker led the landscape architecture departments at both Harvard and the University of California, Berkeley, and founded some of the profession’s most successful firms. He was a chief designer for the National September 11 Memorial in New York and designed the famous Tanner Fountain at Harvard.
“For ULI, choosing Peter Walker makes a statement about the importance of landscape architecture to the built environment, and especially the necessity of providing sustainable systems, both built and natural,” said the jury’s chairman, John Bucksbaum, in a statement prepared by ULI. “His work is completely representative of what the Nichols Prize stands for—a lifelong dedication to building places that will be shared and cherished for generations.”
Past winners of the Nichols Prize include Peter Calthorpe, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Richard M. Daley, and His Highness the Aga Khan.
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