James Corner

Biography

M.L.A. and Urban Design Certificate, University of Pennsylvania (1986)
B.A. with first class honors, Manchester Metropolitan University (1983)

James Corner is a registered landscape architect and urban designer, and founder and director of James Corner Field Operations, where he oversees the production of all design projects in the office. He was the chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design from 2000-2012 and is currently a professor in the Department.

Major projects include the High Line, New York City; Freshkills Park, Staten Island; Shelby Farms Park, Memphis; the Race Street Pier, Philadelphia; MGM City Center, Las Vegas; Shenzhen Qianhai Urban Design Plan, China; Central Waterfront, Seattle; Chicago's Navy Pier; The Civic Center Parks, Santa Monica; and the South Park of London's Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

His work has been recognized with the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award (2010), the New York City Arts Commission Award for Excellence in Design (2005); the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Academy Award in Architecture (2004); the Daimler-Chrysler Award for Design Innovation (2000); and the Architectural League of New York Design Award (2000). He has been featured in the New York Times, the Times of London, Time, Esquire and Metropolis. He serves on the Board of the Forum for Urban Design.

His work as a designer is complemented by a body of writing on landscape architectural design and urbanism. He is author with Alex MacLean of Taking Measures Across the American Landscape, which received the AIA International Book of the Year Award for 1997, and editor of Recovering Landscape: Essays in Contemporary Landscape Architecture, which focuses on the revitalization of landscape architecture as a creative cultural practice. Other writings include essays in Landscape Urbanism, Mohsen Mostafavi, ed.; Mappings, Denis Cosgrove ed.; and Ecological Design and Planning, George Thompson and Frederick Steiner, eds.

He has lectured and exhibited work internationally, including the Venice Biennale; the Lisbon Triennale; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum; the Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; the Art Center, Pasadena; the National Museum, Washington DC; Max Protetch Gallery, New York; the Canadian Center for Architecture, Montreal; the Architectural Association, London; the Royal College of Art, London; the Royal Danish Academy of Art, Copenhagen; and ArchiLAB, Paris.