Imbert named next director of the Knowlton School of Architecture

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Dorothee Imbert in front of Knowlton Hall
Landscape Architecture Professor Dorothée Imbert has been named the new Director of the Knowlton School. Imbert’s four-year term will begin July 1, 2020. She will succeed Walter H. Kidd Professor Michael B. Cadwell, FAIA, who has served as director for nine years.

Imbert joined the Knowlton faculty in 2013 as the inaugural Hubert C. Schmidt ’38 Chair in Landscape Architecture. Before joining Knowlton, Imbert established the Master of Landscape Architecture program at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis and taught at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design.

Imbert's research includes work on landscape modernism with an emphasis on Europe and California. She is the author of the Landscape Inventories: Michel Desvigne Paysagiste (2018), Between Garden and City: Jean Canneel-Claes and Landscape Modernism (2009), Garrett Eckbo: Modern Landscapes for Living (2005), The Modernist Garden in France (1993), and the editor of the volume Food and the City: Histories of Culture and Cultivation (2015). Imbert’s current research is on urban agriculture and productive landscapes. She is a Senior Fellow in Garden and Landscape Studies at Dumbarton Oaks (Washington D.C.), a research institute of Harvard University.

Imbert has served on numerous boards and juries, including Dumbarton Oaks and the Society of Architectural Historians. In 2016, she organized the international symposium “THIS IS A TEST: Landscape as Site for Research” at Ohio State’s Knowlton School and Wexner Center for the Arts. She continues to engage in research and design practice and recently completed the Square (with Andrew Cruse), a landscape on structure for the Novartis campus in Basel, Switzerland.

Imbert was named one of the 25 Most Admired Educators in the 2019 DesignIntelligence landscape architecture category, which honors excellence among educators and administrators based on input from thousands of design professionals, academic department heads, and students. Imbert was praised for her “high standards in every aspect of the profession—design, literature, research, technology, theory. Well spoken, inspirational, fair, and witty.”

Imbert received her architect's diploma from the Unité Pédagogique d'Architecture nº 1 and holds an MArch and MLA from the University of California, Berkeley. She practiced landscape architecture at Peter Walker and Partners.

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