Olmsted Lecture featuring Chris Matthews

The Department of Landscape Architecture cordially invites you to the Olmsted Lecture featuring Chris Matthews, senior associate and design leader at Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates (MVVA). Mr. Matthews will discuss Urban Landscapes on Tuesday, April 3 at 12:30 p.m. in the Architecture Building, room 100. 

Chris has over 18 years of experience in the practice of Landscape Architecture in London, Tokyo, and Cambridge. He creates landscapes that address contemporary program, a site's history, infrastructure and environmental function to create modern, memorable and transformative places. He is also an expert in the use of vegetation in design. Chris' recent projects include: advising the Olympic Park Legacy Company on the transformation of the 2012 Olympic Games site into a vibrant and sustainable amenity for East London, working with the Olympic Delivery Authority for the Broxbourne White Water Centre, and Harvard University's Common Spaces Master Plan. He received a Master of Landscape Architecture from Harvard's Graduate School of Design, where he is now a Visiting Professor in Landscape Architecture. He has been a guest critic at Rhode Island School of Design, the University of Illinois, and Harvard's Graduate School of Design. He joined MVVA in 2002.

Founded in 1982, and with offices in Brooklyn, New York and Cambridge, Massachusetts, MVVA's earliest projects, primarily gardens, plazas, and other smaller institutional projects, were critically celebrated for their groundbreaking achievements. In the next decade, the firm's commissions expanded to a scale of landscape in which it was possible to achieve an "ecological urbanism," with projects such as the Master Plans for Brooklyn Bridge Park and Lower Don Lands in Toronto, and built work like Teardrop Park and the George Bush Presidential Center in Dallas. These Urban Landscapes are at the forefront of a resurgence in Landscape Architects' influence at the scale of the city. The office works closely with urban planners, architects, engineers, and ecologists, and as a result, MVVA has emerged as an innovative leader of multidisciplinary urban design teams.