Peter Walker (landscape architect)

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The interior courtyard of the Sony Center Berlin was designed by Peter Walker

Peter Walker (* 1932 ) is an American landscape architect , his office is in Berkeley near San Francisco .

Landscape architecture

Walker grew up in California and began studying landscape architecture at the University of California at Berkeley in 1955 . After graduating there with a bachelor's degree , he continued his studies at the University of Illinois and Harvard University , where he graduated with a master's degree in 1957 .

During his studies he had worked for Lawrence Halprin , in the office of his former professor Hideo Sasaki he got his first job. Walker became a Sasaki business partner in 1972 and the office was renamed Sasaki, Walker Associates, Inc. In 1983 he founded his own company, which is based in Berkeley.

Peter Walker was best known for his urban squares and green spaces. His “generous landscapes” were inspired by Donald Judd and Robert Irwin , who in the USA “almost single-handedly raised landscape architecture to a high artistic level”. Large-scale patterns drawn with different floor coverings can often be found in his designs. The use of reduced forms makes him appear as a minimalist . On the other hand, its artificial-looking, often regularly arranged design elements were reminiscent of the parks of the French Baroque .

Teaching assignments

Walker had been teaching at Harvard University since 1976, and other teaching positions and visiting professorships at numerous other universities followed.

Publications

In addition to numerous magazine articles that deal with the work of Peter Walker, he has also co-authored several books:

  • Peter Walker and Cathy Deino Blake: Minimalist Gardens Without Walls . Cambridge, The MIT Press, 1990.
  • Peter Walker and Leah Levy: Peter Walker: Minimalist Gardens . Washington, DC, Spacemaker Press, 1997.
  • Peter Walker and Jane Brown Gillette: Peter Walker and Partners Landscape Architecture: Defining the Craft . San Francisco, Oro Editions, 2005.

In 1996 he founded Spacemaker Press , which publishes Land Forum magazine and books on landscape architecture.

Projects

Although Peter Walker has been designing squares for 50 years, he became known to a broad public with the design for the design of the World Trade Center Memorial . A selection of other projects, with a focus on Europe:

  • Administration building Bayer AG , Leverkusen
  • Office building for Deutsche Post AG in Bonn, architects Murphy / Jahn , built in 2002
  • Münchner Tor, office building on Mies-van-der-Rohe-Strasse in Munich, architects Murphy / Jahn, built in 2004
  • Munich International Airport , Kempinski Hotel Airport Munich, 1994
  • One North Wacker Drive, exterior of an office building in Chicago

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Thorbjörn Andersson (2003): Learning from America's Classics . Topos 45, p. 18ff. Online, accessed on November 6, 2007 ( Memento of the original from September 27, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.topos.de
personal data
SURNAME Walker, Peter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American landscape architect
DATE OF BIRTH 1932