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Warren T. Byrd Jr., ASLA
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Raised with respect for the land and an appreciation of the environment, C. Edward Curtin, ASLA, arrived at college expecting to become a veterinarian. A lecture by Gene DeTurk, ASLA, redirected the young man toward the field of landscape architecture. "Gene did an excellent job of creating a vision for me of what landscape architects do and the scope of their work—I was sold," he says.
The Society and the field at large have benefited immensely from Curtin's unwavering commitment to the profession. Since becoming a full member of ASLA 20 years ago, Curtin has held almost every leadership position available at the chapter and national level. His guidance has set the direction of the Indiana Chapter, launching its course as one of ASLA's most active state organizations and producing a cadre of young leaders. As Indiana Chapter Trustee, he worked to broaden the influence of the Board of Trustees and enhance representation of the chapters. Meanwhile, through his two consecutive terms as ASLA's Vice President of Finance, he successfully guided the Society through the difficult financial times that followed the cancellation of the 2001 Annual Meeting in Montreal.
Curtin's concern for ASLA's stability goes beyond financial stewardship. He has played an active role in assuring that future practitioners are licensed professionals. In addition to helping his own chapter prepare licensure candidates, in 1989 he partnered with Virginia Russell, FASLA, to help other chapters transition to the LARE Review Session. His efforts on the licensure front include a nationally adopted review session, continuous training for review session instructors, LARE workshops and education sessions, and contributions to the book LARE: A Guide to Professional Development.
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Educator, researcher, and practitioner, John C. Ellsworth, ASLA, has been at the forefront of technical and educational advances in landscape architecture. Early on, Ellsworth recognized the potential of sophisticated computer-graphic technology and demonstrated its value to his fellow practitioners and students. His work on photo-realistic visualization of landscape changes is known throughout the country and the world. As a professor of landscape architecture, he raised the stature of the landscape architecture and environmental planning department at Utah State University by making it one of the very few to incorporate visualization of landscape scenic resources on public lands into the curriculum.
Ellsworth's efforts to expand the body of knowledge and test emerging technology in the areas of management and analysis of landscape visual resources have resulted in many award-winning articles and research reports. In addition to receiving consistently high ratings from students in the traditional classroom, Ellsworth has created one of Utah State's best online-learning courses. His expertise in this area has been acknowledged by both Landscape Architecture magazine and the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture for which he chairs the Online and Distance Education Task Force.
As he accepts the honor conveyed by the Council of Fellows, Ellsworth reflects, "My students' successes constantly inspire and enlighten me, teaching me lessons that can only be learned by teachers from their students. I am inspired to live up to the status of ASLA Fellow by continuing to do my best for my profession, my students, and the people and places that benefit from my work."
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James Fetterman, ASLA, has spent the majority of his distinguished 30-year career with HOK Planning Group, where he has served as a vice president since 1976. As a young landscape architect, he assembled an extraordinary international portfolio, creating notable landscape architecture, master planning, and urban design projects in Argentina, Korea, India, Indonesia, China, Portugal, the Philippines, Italy, Egypt, and the Middle East.
More recently, he has directed his attention closer to home. The Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank, John Deere Commons in Moline, Illinois, and North Fox Island, Charlevoix, Michigan, are among Fetterman's most celebrated works in the Midwest. His 1986 plan for adaptive reuse of Union Station as a mixed-use development was the largest historic preservation project in the United States at that time. Now, Union Station is widely credited with revitalizing downtown St. Louis. His imprimatur on the St. Louis landscape will endure: Fetterman master planned Choutou Lake and Greenway and led the design of Emerson Grand Basin and Post-Dispatch Lake in the city's famed Forest Park. He has also presided over numerous projects in the city's downtown, including streetscape designs, Laclede's Landing, and Cupples Station.
Fetterman's body of work represents a conscious effort to "improve the St. Louis region's physical conditions, environmental health, and quality of life through a series of projects deliberately connected and contextually and socially sympathetic to their surroundings." Elevation to Fellowship in the Society represents "an appreciation of my personal accomplishments and the built work I have been fortunate to participate in," he says. "I am most grateful to those who inspired me."
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Through her concerted efforts to reach out to professionals and the public, Kathleen Garcia, ASLA, has distinguished herself among landscape architects. A principal at the firm Wallace Roberts & Todd, she has captured numerous design awards. However, Garcia's personal ethic of service stands out, illustrated by her extensive involvement in civic and related professional organizations. She is an active and worthy ambassador of ASLA and its values, raising the profession's visibility and promoting landscape architects as natural leaders in the movement toward sustainability and livable communities.
Highlights of her extensive volunteer career include four mayoral appointments in the city of San Diego. Three times she was the first landscape architect to assume the position. As San Diego city planning commissioner, Garcia's hallmark is halting practices that degrade the environment. In so doing, she has educated fellow commissioners, staff, and developers about more sustainable alternatives to standard strategies. She has made the Society's recommendations on Environmental Sustainability (pdf) , Visual Resources (pdf), and Livable Communities (pdf), standard references for San Diego public-policy makers.
Despite many previous honors to her credit, Garcia says she is "grateful and humbled by this peer recognition" and goes on to note, "As members of ASLA, we are accountable for our environmental ethic, our design creativity, and our community sensitivity. As Fellows, we add the charge of leadership. My particular interest is in expanding that leadership outside the association of landscape practitioners—in short, preaching beyond the choir."
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Craig C. Halvorson, ASLA, launched his career in the office of Carol R. Johnson in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he served as lead designer on dozens of significant projects and rose to the post of senior vice president. Works there included the Revere Beach Master Plan and the Lechmere Canal, which garnered an ASLA Centennial Medal.
In 1980 Halvorson established his own practice, and his work has made an impact far beyond its initial context of time and place. The Park at Post Office Square, described by the Boston Globe as "a perfect park," has earned numerous national awards and is often cited in surveys of outstanding park design. The 1993 Master Plan for Mount Auburn Cemetery is a landmark of historic landscape preservation planning, cited in ASLA's 100 Years of Landscape Architecture. The first comprehensive analysis of a historical cemetery landscape, the plan spurred similar efforts at historic rural cemeteries across the country and is in its fourth printing.
His groundbreaking works have influenced many areas of landscape architecture practice, including landscapes over deck, historic landscape preservation, landscape architect-artist collaboration, and invigorating and enfranchising "friend groups." His numerous works are distinctive not only for their excellence in design, but also for a process that brings together responsible and creative options for neighborhood involvement, cross-discipline collaboration, and longevity of the works themselves. Despite his "wide and diverse body of work," Halvorson's greatest pride comes from "the staff that have chosen to conduct their careers at Halvorson Design Partnership. Getting to work with these people every day is a blessing."
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Knowledge manifests itself in diverse ways. For James E. Hiss, ASLA, knowledge underlies not only an extensive body of award-winning projects, but also an exemplary academic career and significant contributions to the professional literature as an author.
His award-winning work ranges from residential design and a garden for the U.S. Botanical Garden to the master plan and gardens for Chadwick Arboretum at Ohio State University. This design work is integral to his teaching and writing. As an Ohio State professor, Hiss routinely received high marks from both students and alumni for general excellence as an instructor. He has authored and coauthored significant publications that have advanced the professional knowledge in landscape architecture, including Perspectives: An Effective Design Tool and Residential Landscape Architecture: Design Process for the Private Residence, currently in its fourth edition. He illustrated Action by Design and Guidelines to Professional Practice by Lane Marshall, FASLA. Now, Hiss is working with Prentice Hall on the first in a series of three landscape graphics books for plans and sections.
Both professor and designer, Hiss feels blessed "for a tremendously challenging and rewarding career as a practicing educator" and "grateful and honored to be in the company of other ASLA Fellows whom I have admired and who have inspired me for nearly three decades."
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Catherine Howett, ASLA, began her career in landscape architecture on the faculty of the University of Georgia's school of environmental design barely three years after graduating from that program. Her insistence upon the essential connections between landscape architectural history, critical theory, and contemporary practice informs her thought, teaching, writing, and practice. She explains, "Shared ideas and imagination are more essential to advancing the profession than acquired skills; teaching, writing, and designing are ways of participating in great conversations that bridge the boundaries of past and present, of discipline, and of place."
Howett served as curator of an Atlanta Historical Society exhibition examining 250 years of landscape design and gardening tradition in the colony and state of Georgia. Through a series of essays she wrote on topics in Southern landscape history, lectures and papers presented at numerous scholarly conferences and symposia, and her active involvement in the newly formed Southern Garden History Society, Howett gained recognition as a landscape historian with strong interests in the experience of the American South.
Her scholarly pursuits find a natural extension in her strong commitment to the field of historic landscape preservation and particularly in her consistent willingness to challenge insufficiently examined conceptual premises and assumptions underlying what is generally considered to be good landscape preservation practice. Howett has perceived her vocation as an educator in concert with the three-fold mission of the University of Georgia—teaching, research, and service. The breadth of interest that distinguishes her from more traditionally trained landscape historians has led to an international reputation as a leading expositor of the theory and history of landscape architecture.
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In addition to creating a body of unique and illustrious professional work that has revolutionized campus landscapes across New Mexico and the American Southwest, Guy Robert Johns, ASLA, helped landscape architecture gain a solid footing in New Mexico when the profession was in its infancy there in the 1970s and 1980s.
He was one of the leaders for the legislative push for professional registration in New Mexico and was a key force in the lobbying effort to pass the Landscape Architects Act in 1985. He served as the first chair of the state's Board of Landscape Architects and was instrumental in crafting the rules and regulations of the board. Johns presided when the board adopted its continuing education provision for landscape architects—a first for design professionals in the state and later copied by the state's Board of Architects. During his current, third term on the board, he has helped craft a number of successful upgrades to the state's licensure law, today considered an exemplary title and practice act. He has also served with distinction as a CLARB delegate, giving New Mexico a voice for the first time in that body.
Johns also worked actively to establish the New Mexico Chapter of ASLA and served as its first president. Throughout his career, his efforts on behalf of his profession and fellow practitioners have distinguished Johns in his commitment to service to landscape architecture, landscape architects, and the public they serve.
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Todd Johnson, ASLA, maintains that, in his practice, his goal is to attract and nurture smart people to become great leaders of landscape architecture. "My greatest accomplishment," he offers, "is to make my colleagues more capable than I was." Others may demur on that point, citing the distinctive built work that has been one of Johnson's trademarks throughout a career in which he has led the design efforts behind many award-winning projects that have earned recognition from ASLA, the American Institute of Architects, Urban Land Institute, Congress for the New Urbanism, and Progressive Architecture Magazine.
Projects like Larimer Square, the Denver Riverfront Commons, 16th Street Mall Extension, and Jefferson County Government Center have become major destinations, attracting thousands of visitors and enriching multiple lives. His enthusiasm for the profession has created public awareness of landscape architecture as key to shaping urban and natural landscapes, exerting a positive influence on communities and the environment.
Johnson is passionate about the idea of connecting people with nature and people with people. He credits his brother Craig with being a great mentor, sharing "great joy in the profession and defining that joy in three parts: making places, being sensitive to relationships of all living things, and teaching/preaching this knowledge daily." His leadership in the profession has been guided by three principles that define the essence of his work: maintaining stewardship of the land, creating distinctive built works, and enlightening young people and colleagues about the responsibility and power of the profession his work has embraced and enhanced.
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William H. Laubmann, ASLA, began to accumulate professional accolades while leading Laubmann-Reed & Associates, Inc., a firm honored with 26 national and international design awards. His commitment to designing the best product possible has resulted in works that stimulate social awareness of the artistic potential of a site. His design talent and his firm's professional achievements have raised the standard of design and exposed the profession to international opportunities. Laubmann first developed his facility for international projects during graduate school while working part-time at The Architects' Collaborative in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the 1960s. Along with his partner Ben Reed, Laubmann was among the few landscape architects to enter emerging markets in the Middle East, China, Europe, South America, and Central America during the 1970s.
For the Piedmont Park Master Plan in Atlanta, Georgia, Laubmann served as principal in charge and lead designer on the first master plan restoration since the Olmsted Brothers' 1912 original. He led the creation of documentation detailing park history and programs and analyzed facilities and regional aspects such as zoning and land use. He was a founding member of the Friends of Piedmont Park, which raises funds for future park improvements.
"My love of the outdoors, knowledge of ecology, and passion for the built environment led me to become a landscape architect," writes Laubmann. He counts his influence on young design professionals, including his own children, as paramount among his proud professional accomplishments.
LAND Online will profile each of the 32 members of the 2004 Class of ASLA Fellows. Read part one of this series and watch for the final installment of "Focus on the Fellows" in the next issue.
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