You’re invited to next week’s Department of Landscape Architecture + Environmental and Urban Design Spring 2026 Lecture. We’re pleased to welcome Alma Du Solier, Studio Director and Principal at Hood Design Studio, who integrates environmental planning and landscape design in her work.
Alma earned her Bachelor of Architecture from ITESM Monterrey, her hometown, and later expanded into landscape architecture at the University of California, Berkeley. As the third member of Hood Design Studio, working closely with founder Walter Hood, she contributed to landmark cultural projects such as the DeYoung Museum, helping elevate the firm’s prominence. Her career has included major projects across Latin America, China, and California before returning to Hood Design Studio and to teaching at UC Berkeley. Known for bridging designers, engineers, and scientists, Alma serves as a key communicator across diverse stakeholders. With nearly three decades of experience, she leads projects of all scales with clarity, narrative depth, and a deep commitment to design.
About the Lecture
“Messy”
Interrogating the Role of the Landscape Architect as the designer of cultural landscapes in our diverse urban context.
A talk by Alma Du Solier
Drawing from several recent projects at Hood Design Studio, this lecture explores the complex role of the designer as both listener and interpreter within cultural landscapes. We are often positioned as implementers of community voices—but that equation is rarely straightforward. The loudest voices are not always the only ones that matter. And what of the sites themselves—the flora and fauna, the layered ecologies already in place? How do we account for those presences without defaulting to a simplistic “native-only” framework?
Is listening merely an act of documenting and/or restoring pre-urban conditions, or can it reveal something more dynamic about how communities and landscapes evolve together? How might our cities grow while retaining their specificity, character, and productive beautiful messiness?
Rather than offering definitive answers, this lecture invites dialogue. Through candid—and at times imperfect—examples from Hood Design Studio and my own practice, I will reflect on the ongoing negotiation of these questions and the evolving nature of authorship, responsibility, and voice in the making of cultural landscapes.
Be part of the conversation on Monday, March 23, 2026, at 5:00 PM in PCA 135 for an engaging lecture and discussion.
