The Visiting Artists Program resource guides contain upcoming speakers' biographies, articles, video and audio content, related publications in the Flaxman Library, and additional online resources. These guides may be used in the classroom in preparation for the event, research, or post-lecture discussion.
Walter Hood: Bill and Stephanie Sick Distinguished Visiting Professor
Tuesday, September 20, 6:00–7:30 p.m. CT
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This event will be live captioned by Communication Access Realtime Translation services.
Join us live for a virtual lecture by landscape architect and artist Walter Hood followed by an audience Q&A.
Walter Hood (MFA 2013) is the creative director and founder of Hood Design Studio in Oakland, California. Hood Design Studio is a cultural practice that works across art, fabrication, design, landscape, research, and urbanism. He is also professor of Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning and Urban Design at the University of California, Berkeley. He lectures on and exhibits professional and theoretical projects nationally and internationally. He was recently the Spring 2020 Diana Balmori Visiting Professor at the Yale School of Architecture and the Spring 2021 Senior Loeb Scholar for the Harvard GSD Loeb Fellowship.
Hood creates urban spaces that resonate with and enrich the lives of current residents while also honoring communal histories. He melds architectural and fine arts expertise with a commitment to designing ecologically sustainable public spaces that empower marginalized communities. Over his career, he has transformed traffic islands, vacant lots, and freeway underpasses into spaces that challenge the legacy of neglect of urban neighborhoods. Through engagement with community members, he teases out the natural and social histories as well as current residents’ shared patterns and practices of use and aspirations for a place.
The Studio’s award-winning work has been featured in publications including Dwell, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Fast Company, Architectural Digest, Places Journal, and Landscape Architecture Magazine. Hood is also a recipient of the 2017 Academy of Arts and Letters Architecture Award, 2019 Knight Foundation Public Spaces Fellowship, 2019 MacArthur Fellowship, 2019 Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize, and most recently, the 2021 United States Artists Fellowship. Hood is a fellow at the American Academy in Rome and one of the 2021 elected members of the Academy of Arts and Letters. Hood Design Studio has also been featured in the 2021 AD100 list.
Established in 2006 by a generous gift from Bill and Stephanie Sick, this distinguished visiting professorship enables internationally renowned artists and designers to visit and teach at SAIC.
Portrait credit: Walter Hood
Studio
Once the US’s Largest Slave Port, Charleston Will Open African American Museum Next Year
Gabriella Angeleti | The Art Newspaper | August 23, 2022
Walter Hood speaks with AN about his practice and the role of reflective nostalgia today
Keren Dillard | The Architect’s Newspaper | August 1, 2022
Bespoke Landscapes, for the Past and Future
Walter Hood | Architect Magazine | April 1, 2022
*This is a library resource that requires ARTIC login
Walter Hood, a 'contemporary prophet of landscape and public space,' is awarded the Architectural League 2021 President's Medal
Katherine Guimapang | Archinect | August 4, 2021
Othering Blackness in Design: Reflections with Walter Hood
Rukshan Vathupola | Archinect | July 2, 2021
(Re)Making History: A Conversation with Walter Hood
Elizabeth Pagliacolo | Azure Magazine | March 4, 2021
Interview with Walter Hood on History and Race in Landscape Design
Cathleen McGuigan | Architectural Record | August 4, 2020
Hot on Heels of MacArthur ‘Genius’ Win, Artist Walter Hood Receives $250,000 Gish Prize for Innovation in Art, Social Change
Maximilíano Durón | artnews | October 7, 2019
How MacArthur Fellowship Winner Walter Hood turns Landscapes into Sculpture
Deborah Vankin | Los Angeles Times | September 25, 2019
*This is a library resource that requires ARTIC login
Conversation with Amanda Williams, Andres L. Hernandez, and Walter J. Hood
A Way, Away | July 2, 2017
Design Studio Vol. 4: Working at the Intersection by 
Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America by 
250 Things a Landscape Architect Should Know by 
Black Landscapes Matter by 
Walter Hood by 
Diversity and Design by 
30:30 Landscape Architecture by 
Representing Landscapes by 
Learning Mind by 
Sites of Memory by Witness Trees, 2021 Chicago Architecture Biennial
The new Witness Trees installation is inspired by the state's orthogonal grid and invokes the history of the Great Migration.
MacArthur Fellow: Landscape and Public Artist (2019)
Walter Hood’s profile in the MacArthur Fellows Program Class of 2019.
Visiting Artists Program Lecture Recordings from the Archive
SAIC Visiting Artists Program video and audio lecture recordings (1977–present.) Available with SAIC login credentials.
SAIC Digital Collections: Visiting Artists Program
SAIC Visiting Artists Program publicity archive and audio recordings (1977–98).
