Elizabeth Meyer in the News
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
"Shaping the American Landscape" Includes Entries by Faculty and Alumni
by Elizabeth Meyer A new reference work,"Shaping the American Landscape: New Profiles from the Pioneers of American Landscape Design Project" (University of Virginia Press), includes entries on two beloved figures associated with the early years of the UVa Landscape Architecture program, Professor Benjamin Howland and Lecturer Meade Palmer. This book edited by Charles Birnbaum (UVA Howland Lecturer 1992), Founder and President of The Cultural Landscape Foundation, is an encyclopedia of biographical entries about significant American landscape architects. It follows an earlier encyclopedia of biographies, "Pioneers of American Landscape Design" (2000), edited by Charles Birnbaum and Robin Karson. UVa Landscape Architecture faculty Ethan Carr, Elizabeth Meyer and Reuben Rainey as well as alumna Sue Nelson authored bibliographic essays in "Shaping the American Landscape". The subjects of their research include significant leaders in the National Park Service, Conrad Wirth and Benjamin Howland, modernist designers Lawrence Halprin and Robert Royston, and the Virginia's most-recognized twentieth century landscape architect, Meade Palmer, whose Warrenton-based firm was a training ground for dozens of influential landscape architects from Terence Harkness (Professor, University of Illnois), Hallie Boyce (Principal, Olin Studio) to Warren T. Byrd, Jr. (former UVA Dept Chair and Professor Emeritus).Monday, May 4, 2009
NEA Design Arts Stewardship Award Granted to Project Documenting History of Charlottesville's Downtown Mall
The National Endowment for the Arts has selected "Designing Community: A Social + Design History of Charlottesville’s Pedestrian Downtown Mall"(Lawrence Halprin & Associates, 1973 Community workshop, 1974 Downtown Master Plan, 1976 Public Space design) for a 2009 Design Arts Stewardship award. This grant, awarded to Preservation Piedmont and the Charlottesville Community Design Center (CCDC), will fund continued documentation, research and oral history interviews leading to publication and public colloquium about the Halprin design Charlottesville Pedestrian Mall. The work will be directed by Elizabeth K. Meyer in collaboration with Daniel Bluestone, Lydia Brandt, Jane Fisher, Director of CCDC, and a group of UVa graduate students. UVa students and faculty in Architectural History and Landscape Architecture started site documentation of and research on the Charlottesville Pedestrian Mall in the Fall 2008 semester. The preliminary documentation and research done by the students took place within a graduate design studio, LANDSCAPE ADDITIONS, taught by Professor Elizabeth K. Meyer, FASLA. The students' findings were compiled into a small publication in January 2009 which was selected for a Virginia Chapter ASLA Student Award for Communications. Student work continued in the Spring 2009 semester in the form of an urban community history research workshop under the direction of Professor Daniel Bluestone, Director of the Historic Preservation program. The student research in his course establishes a social history context for understanding the relationship between the Halprin design for the Mall and mid twentieth century "urban renewal" in Charlottesville.Thursday, March 19, 2009
Landscape Architecture Students Win Numerous Virginia ASLA Awards
The Virginia Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects (VA ASLA) will award several students in Assoc. Professor Elizabeth Meyer’s LAR 801 Landscape Additions studio (Fall 2008) in the annual Student Design Competition. Receiving an Honor Award for Design: Zoe Edgecomb, Serena Nelson and Chihiro Shinohara for the design of a Second Street NE addition to Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall; and Ryan McEnroe for a street and a room, an addition to the Mall’s west end. Receiving a Merit Award for Design: Elise Mazareas for “Choreographing Flow, Constructing Experience”, an addition to the Mall’s west end. Receiving an Honor Award in the Communications category: Zoe Edgecomb and Serena Nelson on behalf of the entire class’s Design Research Book which examines the history of the Downtown Mall, Halprin Associates’ design philosophy, 20th c. pedestrian streets, and Landscape Preservation Theory and Practice.Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Four A-School Students Win Kenan Fellowships for Summer 2008
The William R. Kenan Endowment Fund of the Academical Village summer fellowships support educational opportunities for students to conduct research projects that increase public understanding of the Academical Village. Each student receives a $4,000 stipend and his/her faculty advisor receives $1,000. The resulting project is intended for public dissemination at the end of the summer and may include an exhibition, publication, or public event. Kenan Fellowships have been awarded to the following School of Architecture students for summer 2008: Lydia Mattice Brandt (faculty advisors: Elizabeth Meyer and Richard Guy Wilson); Benjamin Trudel (faculty advisor: Peter Waldman); Danielle Willkens (faculty advisor: Peter Waldman); and Edwin Wright (faculty advisor: Phoebe Crisman.Wednesday, April 23, 2008
SARC Alumnus Lectures and Students Mount Exhibit for Historic Garden Week in Virginia
[From UVa News Services, by Rebecca Arrington]
The University of Virginia will participate in the 75th Historic Garden Week in Virginia April 22. Events include a lecture by Will Rieley, U.Va. School of Architecture alumnus and former faculty member, and a student-designed exhibit on the architectural history of the U.Va. gardens. As always, the University's pavilion gardens and selected homes will be open to the public for the event.
Rieley, who serves as consulting landscape architect to the Garden Club of Virginia, which sponsors historic garden week, will give a public talk titled "The Garden Club of Virginia and the U.Va. Gardens" at 2 p.m. in the auditorium of the Harrison Institute/Small Special Collections Library.
Special Collections will also house a student-curated exhibit, "Designing History, Curating Nature: The Gardens Within the Academical Village" on April 21 and 22. The exhibit outlines the architectural history of the gardens and their relationship to the wider University community.
Landscape architecture students Jessica Calder, Melissa Celii, Taylor Cooper, Paul De, Kurt Fulmer, Dhara Goradia, Lauren Hackney, Christa Kolb, Elise Mazareas and Chihiro Shinohara, as well as College of Arts & Sciences student Mary Brandon Ingram, created the exhibit as independent study projects over the course of the year. They explored themes such as how the gardens have changed over time, their use as social spaces and the patronage of the Garden Club, which restored the gardens in the second half of the 20th century.
Landscape architecture professor Beth Meyer, who guided the students in developing the exhibit, said that the project was a chance for the whole University community to learn more about the unique spaces.
"There are a lot of myths about those gardens," Meyer said. She also pointed out that while Jefferson laid out the serpentine walls, "He didn't design the gardens. He let the faculty develop them the way anybody who moved into a house would. They had to grow their own food...." [for complete article, follow link to UVa News online]
Monday, October 15, 2007
Faculty and Students Visit New Orleans' Pontilly Neighborhood to Plan Green Space
Students in Assoc. Professor Julie Bargmann's LAR 801 Refloat NOLA studio traveled to New Orleans last weekend to participate in a design workshop in the Pontilly neighborhood. Professor William Morrish and Assoc. Professor Elizabeth Meyer also participated.
From the New Orleans' Times-Picayune, "DESIGN WEEKEND
Landscape experts and students converge on Pontchartrain Park, Gentilly Woods,"(Oct. 13. 2007:
"As Pontchartrain Park and Gentilly Woods residents rebuild their neighborhoods, they can expect lots of ideas to choose from regarding how to design their natural areas.
"A group of design experts and university students in cooperation with Longue Vue House & Gardens are gathering information about the green spaces in the two New Orleans neighborhoods, collectively known as Pontilly, so they can develop strategies for shaping the landscape in ways that add to the area's beauty while helping protect it against flooding...
The Pontilly neighborhood already has a master plan, said William Morrish, a professor of architecture, landscape architecture and urban and environmental planning at the University of Virginia. This effort, he said, will provide richer details for landscaping the environment and public parks in Pontilly.
"We're hoping that by early next year we'll have a plan to take to the public," said Jane Wolff, assistant professor of architecture at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo. "It will be less like a prescription and more like a menu" from which residents may make a selection.
Wolff, Moorish, Longue Vue Executive Director Bonnie Goldblum and students from Louisiana State University, Southern University, Tulane University and the University of Virginia toured the Pontilly area Friday. They began discussing possible options for the green spaces in connection with the four-day design weekend financed by $30,000 from the Catherine Brown Memorial Fund, which is named after Moorish's deceased wife.
There are many issues to consider, said Moorish, like using some of the land in the area to reduce flooding, making the land more productive, sorting out the best use for vacant spaces and deciding what to plant...." [for complete article, visit the Times-Picayune website]
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Students Win Top ASLA Honors in Design and Communications
School of Architecture students are recipients of awards in two categories in the American Society of Landscape Architects 2007 Student Awards program. Graduate student in the Architecture and Landscape Architecture programs, Toshihiko Karato, received the highest honor in the General Design Category, The Award of Excellence, for his project Plugging In: Bringing the Stream Back to Watts. Associate Professors Elizabeth Meyer and Elissa Rosenberg served as faculty advisers for the project. The awards jury commented: "Lyrical. Visitors would be transformed by this place. A great concept that could convert this park into a safe, valuable, much needed resource for this neighborhood. Well presented with great sections and a beautiful palette; organized in a very successful manner." The graduate student editors of the second volume of lunch: dialect, Shanti Levy, David Malda, and Ryan Moody, won an Honor Award in the Communications Category. Faculty advisers for lunch:dialect were Associate Professors Phoebe Crisman and Elizabeth Meyer. The jury commented,"This is a very strong online journal. It's beautifully presented with strong graphics and good design framing important content. This would be a great model for other universities." Images of both projects are available for viewing on the ASLA website.Sunday, April 8, 2007
test
testThursday, May 5, 2005
Assoc. Professor Elizabeth Meyer Gives Sasaki Lecture at U. of Illinois
Landscape Architecture Assoc. Professor Elizabeth Meyer gave the prestigious Hideo Sasaki Memorial Lecture at the University of Illinois yesterday, as part of the annual Sasaki Day events. The lecture has been given annually since 1983 in honor of Hideo Sasaki, the internationally celebrated landscape architect and planner, as well as an alumnus of the University of Illinois. Meyer's talk is entitled, "Site Citations: The Grounds of Modern Landscape Architecture."Friday, January 28, 2005
Three Professors Contribute to New Book About Site
A new compendium of essays on the definition and significance of site, Site Matters: Design Concepts, Histories, and Strategies (Eds. Carol J. Braun and Andrea Kahn; Routledge: 2005), includes entries by Professor of Architecture Robin Dripps, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture Elizabeth Meyer and Associate Professor of Architecture and Chair of the Department of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, William Sherman. Dripps' essay, "Groundwork," seeks to establish a literal and metaphoric foundation for the discussion of site. Meyer's piece, "Site Citations: The Grounds of Modern Landscape Architecture," discusses the history of site in landscape architectural design. Sherman's afterword, "Engaging the Field," describes the many ways in which the fields of architecture and landscape architecture are finding new paths of collaboration through a shared exploration of site.Professor Dolores Hayden of Yale University has said of the book, "At last, an excellent book about sites that should be on the desk of every architecture, landscape architecture, and planning student in the U.S.A. Carol Burns and Andrea Kahn have gathered a distinguished group of authors to discuss the political, poetic, and visual dimensions of sites."
A booksigning will be held on February 21, 2005 at the Van Alen Institute in New York, NY.
