One of the landscape design world’s leading names will be stepping into a new role this summer as Reed Hilderbrand founding principal and partner Gary Hilderbrand has been announced as the new chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture at the Harvard GSD.

Hilderbrand has been on the faculty at Harvard for over 30 years and will step into the role vacated by Anita Berrizbeitia after seven years at the helm of what is the oldest landscape architecture department in academia.

A statement from GSD Dean Sarah Whiting praised Hilderbrand’s “sensibilities as a teacher and as a practitioner,” stating that the two “are one and the same.”

“His unyielding efforts to reconcile imminent, often intractable forces of urbanization with ecological sustainability, cultural history, vegetative regimes, and thoughtful kindness are central to his pedagogy and practice both,” she continued. “I could not be more delighted he has accepted this appointment, and I am excited for what is to come under his leadership of the department. I also look forward to celebrating Anita’s important tenure as chair of the department and thank her for all that she has brought to the school.”

Hilderbrand’s work has garnered hundreds of awards in the years since completing his own studies at the GSD in 1985. His practice is well-regarded for contributing designs to some of the most significant cultural projects in recent memory. He is also the author of several essays and monographs including 1997’s Making a Landscape of Continuity: The Practice of Innocenti & Webel, and has served on the editorial boards of Spacemaker Press and the ASLA’s Landscape Architecture magazine, among others. 

“I’m humbled and honored in equal measure by this appointment, and I am grateful to Dean Whiting for her confidence and support,” Hilderbrand said of his appointment. “For more than a century, Landscape Architecture at Harvard has positively shaped discourse in research, teaching, and practice in the field. We continue that legacy forward with renewed urgency in the face of ever more dramatic environmental and social upheaval. I’m grateful for Professor Anita Berrizbeitia’s remarkable and humane intellectual stewardship over the past seven years, and I look forward to working with my colleagues in the department and the school to uphold the commitment to design leadership that is demanded of us in this time. We stand well prepared.”

Hilderbrand's tenure as chair commences on July 1st.