Dorothée Imbert named chair of UC Berkeley’s Department of Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning
UC Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design is happy to announce the appointment of Dorothée Imbert, FASLA, as professor and chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning. This is a return to CED for Imbert, who earned two master’s degrees, in architecture and landscape architecture, from UC Berkeley.
“We are delighted to welcome Dorothée back to UC Berkeley,” said Interim William W. Wurster Dean Daniel G. Chatman. “There is no better person to lead the Department of Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning at this time. She brings her deep knowledge of the history of modern landscape architecture as well as breadth of academic leadership to our college.”
Imbert’s career has spanned academia, practice, and scholarship. At The Ohio State University’s Austin E. Knowlton School of Architecture, she was professor of landscape architecture and held the Hubert C. Schmidt ’38 Chair in Landscape Architecture. Between 2013 and 2020, she headed the landscape architecture section; between 2020 and 2024, she served as director of the Knowlton School. Prior to joining Knowlton, Imbert established the master of landscape architecture program at Washington University in St. Louis and taught at Harvard University.
— Dorothée Imbert
Imbert has lectured and written extensively on landscape modernism, contemporary practice, and productive landscapes. She is the author of the books The Modernist Garden in France (Yale University Press, 1993); Garrett Eckbo: Modern Landscapes for Living, with Marc Treib (University of California Press, 2005); and Between Garden and City: Landscape Modernism and Jean Canneel-Claes (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009). She is editor of the volumes Food and the City: Histories of Culture and Cultivation (Dumbarton Oaks, 2015) and Landscape Inventories: Michel Desvigne Paysagiste (Applied Research and Design, 2018).
Imbert has received many awards and accolades. She has served on prestigious boards and juries, including Dumbarton Oaks, the American Academy in Rome, and the inaugural Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize. In 2024, she was honored with a CED Distinguished Alumni Award.
Imbert has maintained an engagement in practice, having worked at Peter Walker and Partners and completing The Square with Andrew Cruse, for the Novartis Headquarters in Basel, Switzerland.
In addition to an MArch and MLA from UC Berkeley, she holds a professional architecture degree from the Unité Pédagogique d’Architecture nº 1 in Paris. She was recently recognized as a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects.
“I am thrilled to collaborate with department faculty and students on aligning pedagogy, design, and scholarship with Berkeley’s tradition of excellence and to meet the environmental challenges and resources of our contemporary context,” said Imbert.
Imbert, whose term began July 1, succeeds Acting Chair Richard L. Hindle, who had been serving in this role since the retirement of Professor Emeritus Walter Hood in 2025.
The Department of Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning , which traces its history at UC Berkeley to 1913, is one of three academic departments in the College of Environmental Design. It offers three top-ranked degree programs: the bachelor of arts in landscape architecture, the professional Master of Landscape Architecture, and the PhD in Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning. The department is known for its focus on the design of compelling landscapes that promote ecological integrity and social equity and its curriculum emphasizing critical thinking about the ecological, social, cultural, and visual performance of landscape spaces and systems.