Walter J. Hood

Walter J. Hood (born 1958), is an American designer, artist, academic administrator, and educator.

He is the former chair of landscape architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, and principal of Hood Design Studio in Oakland, California.

Hood has worked in a variety of settings including architecture, landscape architecture, visual art, community leadership, urban design, and in planning and research.

He has spent more than 20 years living in Oakland, California.

He draws on his strong connection to the Black community in his work.

He has chosen to work almost exclusively in the public realm and urban environments.

Walter J. Hood was born in 1958 in Charlotte, North Carolina, where he also grew up.

He attended North Carolina A&T State University, receiving a Bachelor of Landscape Architecture in 1981.

He has received both his Master of Architecture and Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley in 1989.

Hood established Hood Design Studio in Oakland, California, in 1992.

These works won an ASLA Research award in 1996.

Hood's published monographs Urban Diaries (Spacemaker Press, 1997) and Blues & Jazz Landscape Improvisations (Poltroon Press, 1993) illustrate his approach to the design of urban landscapes.

In 1997, Hood was a fellow at the American Academy in Rome in Landscape Architecture.

His essay "Macon Memories" is included in Sites of Memory: Perspectives on Architecture and Race (Princeton Architectural Press, 2001).

Hood's work spans the range from local, community-based projects—such as Splash Pad Park, a converted traffic island alongside Interstate 580 in Oakland, California —to large-scale garden designs like the grounds for the new M. H. de Young Museum in San Francisco with Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron (2005).

Hood's public spaces embrace the essence of urban environments and their links to urban redevelopment and neighborhood revitalization.

He is designing the landscape for the Autry National Center Southwest Museum in Los Angeles, designing an archeological garden within the context of the South Lawn Project at the University of Virginia, and developing a set of monuments and markers for a six-mile waterfront trail in Oakland, California.

His work was featured in the 2006 exhibit "The Good Life: New Public Spaces for Recreation", at the Van Alen Institute in New York.

Hood was the 2009 recipient of the prestigious Cooper–Hewitt National Design Award for Landscape Design, and has exhibited and lectured on his professional projects and theoretical works nationally and abroad.

Hood won an international design competition in 2010 for the Solar Strand project—a quarter-mile solar-panel array on the University at Buffalo's North Campus, financed by the New York Power Authority.

He also received his Master of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2013 in studio arts and sculpture, exploring the role of sculpture and urbanism.

In 2013, Hood served as one of six selection committee members for the Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence.

In 2014, Hood was commissioned by the Metro Nashville Arts Commission to create Witness Walls, a commemorative sculpture celebrating Nashville's civil rights history during the 1950s and 1960s.

A public dedication event for the project, Nashville's first civil-rights inspired public art, was held April 21, 2017.

In 2018, The USC School of Architecture's American Academy in China (AAC) selected Hood as that year's research fellow.

Hood is to design an installation to be executed using only local artisans and materials in Shanghai and Los Angeles; he will also give lectures in both cities.