Elizabeth Meyer

BS, University of Virginia;
MA, Cornell;
MLA, University of Virginia.

Associate Professor

Elizabeth K. Meyer, FASLA, has lectured internationally and published widely on topics concerning landscape design theory, such as “Site Citations: Grounding the Modern Landscape” in Carol Burns and Andrea Kahn’s Site Matters and “The Post-Earth Day Conundrum: Translating Environmental Values into Landscape Design” in Michel Conan’s Environmentalism in Landscape Architecture. Her most recent writing, “Uncertain Parks. Disturbed Sites, Citizens and a Risk Society,” explores the social implications and aesthetic conundrums inherent in the making of new parks on toxic industrial sites. Meyer is currently working on a manifesto entitled "Sustaining Beauty," an affirmation of the necessity of aesthetics in a sustainable design agenda. She has presented this work-in-progress to audiences in London and Beijing, and will publish it in 2008.

Meyer’s teaching and scholarly interests focus on three areas: the recovery and examination of modern landscape theory, the establishment of a contemporary practice of landscape criticism, and the idea of design as site interpretation (sites replete with cultural layers as well as natural processes). She is completing a book focused on these concerns, Groundwork. Practices of Modern Landscape Architecture, with support from the UVA School of Architecture Dean’s Office, the Graham Foundation and a Dumbarton Oaks Fellowship.

This research informs Meyer’s teaching in design studios and lecture courses, such as “Theories of Modern Landscape Architecture,” as well as in electives such as “Topics in Contemporary Landscape Theory.” Long involved in cross-disciplinary teaching with colleagues in Architecture, in 2000 Meyer conceived of a first-year Barcelona travel studio with her colleague Judith Kinnard. Now a key component of the graduate curriculum in both Architecture and Landscape Architecture, this endowed studio travels abroad for two weeks each year to study contemporary design in-situ.

Meyer joined the UVA faculty in 1993, and has served as Landscape Architecture Department Chair and Director of the Graduate Landscape Architecture Program. Previously, Meyer taught at Harvard and Cornell. She is nationally recognized as an outstanding scholar and teacher, with honors and awards from the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture, the American Society of Landscape Architects, and the University of Virginia.

Meyer, a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects, is a registered landscape architect who worked for EDAW and Hanna/Olin, and has consulted with Michael Vergason, Alexandria, and Van Valkenburgh Associates, Cambridge. Several of the projects she worked on with these firms, including projects at Bryant Park (NYC), Carnegie-Mellon University, Wellesley College and UVA, received national design and planning awards.