Peter Walker, FASLA, whose nearly five-decade career has seen him become one of the world’s most prominent landscape architects, will be the keynote speaker at the 37th annual Aggie Workshop Feb. 22-23.
“Workshop 2008: Perseverance,” hosted by Texas A&M University’s student chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects, offers students a chance to hear from nationally acclaimed landscape architects and get a taste of what it’s “really like” once they begin working in the field.
The event, which will take place at the A&M College of Architecture’s Langford Architecture Center, is intended to explore what landscape architects have accomplished while revealing innovative opportunities and available career paths.
There is no more prominent name in landscape architecture than Peter Walker, who will deliver his keynote address Feb. 22 at 11:15 at the Preston Geren Auditorium. Walker and architect Michael Arad, designed “Reflecting Absence,” the National September 11 Memorial design at the site of the fallen World Trade Center in New York City.
Walker’s design called for 300 oak trees in an eight-acre Memorial Plaza that, said the jury, “will create a contemplative space separate from the sights and sounds of the surrounding city. The design is unique in its use of ecological considerations which exceed sustainability standards.”
“I can’t imagine a project more important than this one in the world,” Walker told The New York Times. Peter Walker and Partners was formed in 1983,
Other speakers include Ed Garza ’92 of EDAW, Dwain Scott of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Jean Kavanaugh, past Texas president of the American Society of Landscape Architects.
Rounding out the two-day conference Saturday will be two discussion panels, one with recently graduated students from the landscape architecture department at A&M and another featuring established professionals in the field.
This year’s conference theme was inspired by a speech given by Ed Garza, a College of Architecture Outstanding Alumnus, at last year’s Aggie Workshop. In his speech he described the inspiration for the path leading him to landscape architecture and eventually becoming mayor of San Antonio.
Registration information is available at the Aggie Workshop website, http://www.aggieworkshop.org/.
