Walter Hood

Walter Hood (born 1958, Charlotte, NC) is Professor and former Chair of Landscape Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, and principal of Hood Design Studio in Oakland, CA.

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

Hood grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina, and has spent more than 20 years living and working in the heart of Oakland, California, and 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. He went to school in North Carolina A&T State University receiving bachelor's degree in Architecture in 1981. He has received both Master of Architecture and Master of landscape Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley in 1989. 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.

Hood established Hood Design Studio in Oakland, California in 1992. 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 innovative public spaces are known for the way they embrace the essence of urban environments and for their links to urban redevelopment and neighborhood revitalization. He is currently 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, CA.

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