SGJA awardee 2019
kathryn gustafson

The International Federation of Landscape Architect's President, James Hayter, announced at the 2019 World Congress in Oslo, Norway, that Landscape Architect Kathryn Gustafson has been selected as the winner of the 2019 Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe Award. This award is the highest honour that the International Federation of Landscape Architects can bestow to a landscape architect. The award recognizes a living landscape architect whose lifetime achievements and contributions have had a unique and lasting impact on the welfare of society and the environment and on the promotion of the profession of landscape architecture. The award is bestowed annually on an academic public or private practitioner whose work and achievements are respected internationally.

Kathryn Gustafson graduated from Ecole Nationale Superieure du Paysage, Versailles, France and Fashion Institute of Technology, New York, NY, A.A.S. Since her early work in France, including a series of poetic landscapes for Shell Headquarters (1990), Esso (1992), and L’Oreal (1993), the trialectics of art, landscape and fashion generated by her academic formation were clearly evidenced in the muscular qualities of these landscapes, whose complexities and subtleties engaged the human body on a fundamental level. Her work at the public plaza in Evry (1991) was one of the first landscape projects worldwide to create a flexible space with water jets. Another significant work is the award- winning Jardins de l’Imaginaire in Terrasson la Villedieu (1995), which is classed by the French Ministry of Culture as one of the most notable gardens in France.  

Following her time working in France, Kathryn Gustafson became a founding partner in two distinguished offices, Gustafson Guthrie Nichol (GGN) in Seattle and Gustafson Porter + Bowman (GP+B) in London. With her partners at GGN, Kathryn Gustafson gained a worldwide reputation with the project The Lurie Garden in Chicago’s Millennium Park, one of the most celebrated works in the United States. Most recently, Kathryn and her partners at GP+B won the City of Paris’ Site Tour Eiffel Competition to reimagine the landscape of one of the world’s most iconic monuments.`

Gustafson has contributed towards education and practice internationally. She is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architecture, an honorary Royal Designer for Industry member and a medalist of the French Academy of Architecture. She is the recipient of the Architects’ Journal Jane Drew Prize 1998, the 2001 Chrysler Design Award, the 2008 ASLA Design Medal, the Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize for Architecture 2012 and the 8th Obayashi Prize, Japan in 2014. In 2011, Kathryn and her GGN partners received the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award for Landscape Architecture, and GGN received the ASLA 2017 National Landscape Architecture Firm Award.

The visibility of her design work and her lecturing activities have had a great impact on professionals and students as well as on a broader public. Kathryn Gustafson is a leader in creating world class projects that have impact - iconic projects that help foster the awareness of the profession of landscape architecture and its relevance to contemporary society.

For further information, please contact: chair.cer@iflaworld.org