Anita Berrizbeitia appointed chair of GSD’s Department of Landscape Architecture

The Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) has appointed Anita Berrizbeitia, M.L.A. ’87, as chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture as of July 1, 2015. Berrizbeitia is currently professor of landscape architecture and director of the Master in Landscape Architecture degree programs at the GSD.

Berrizbeitia is a landscape architect specializing in theory and criticism of nineteenth and twentieth-century public landscapes in the United States and Europe. Her research on Latin American cities and landscapes centers on the creative hybridization of local and foreign cultural practices as a response to a centuries-old process of global cultural exchange; the role of large-scale infrastructural projects on territorial organization; and the interface between landscape and emerging urbanization.

At the GSD, Berrizbeitia has taught design studios and theory of contemporary practices, investigating innovative approaches to the conceptualization of public space.

Editorially, Berrizbeitia has edited and co-authored several award-winning books, and her essays have been published in numerous books and journals. She serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Landscape Architecture and the advisory board of the South America Project, and also has served on major competition juries in Chile, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Madrid.

A native of Caracas, Venezuela, Berrizbeitia studied architecture at the Universidad Simon Bolivar before receiving a Bachelor of Arts from Wellesley College in 1980 and a Master in Landscape Architecture from the GSD in 1987. Since then, she has taught in various capacities at the GSD, including as assistant professor of landscape architecture from 1993 to 1998 and as professor of landscape architecture since 2009.