PHILADELPHIA James Corner, associate professor of landscape architecture and Regional Planning at the University of Pennsylvania, has been named chair of the Landscape Architecture Department and is also the recipient of the prestigious 2000 DaimlerChrysler Award.

Prof. Corner, an internationally known designer and theorist, is the first landscape architect chosen for the DaimlerChrysler Award, which recognizes and promotes innovative design.

"The department possesses a tradition I am proud of and a legacy I feel a great responsibility to continue," Prof. Corner said. "It is important to remember, however, that this tradition has never been one of doctrine, but rather one of invention, an always evolving tradition of teaching, research and practice that seeks innovative and pertinent approaches to the very real issues of the time."

Prof. Corner's practice, research and teaching interests focus on developing innovative approaches toward landscape architectural design and urbanism. He is a professionally registered landscape architect and principal with architect Stan Allen of Field Office, a landscape, architectural and urban design practice based in New York and Philadelphia.

Presently he is working in collaboration with Mr. Allen to build the French Embassy Garden on Fifth Avenue in New York, and he has recently undertaken a planning and design study for the redevelopment of a town in Sweden.

Prof. Corner is the author of Taking Measures Across the American Landscape (Yale, 1996), coauthored with Alex MacLean, which received the AIA International Book of the Year Award and the ASLA Award of Honor. He also is the editor of Recovering Landscape: Essays in Contemporary Landscape Architecture (Princeton, 1999), a book focused on the revitalization of landscape architecture as a critical cultural practice.

Prof. Corner was educated at Manchester Polytechnic, England, and the University of Pennsylvania where he received a master in landscape architecture. Prior to his 1988 teaching appointment at Penn, he worked for Wallace, Roberts and Todd on the New Jersey Hudson River Waterfront Redevelopment; for Richard Rogers and Partners on the redevelopment of the Royal Docks in London; and for William Gilliespie and Partners on the design and implementation of the International Garden Festival Park in Liverpool.

During his term at Penn he received the G. Holmes Perkins Award in 1996 for "distinguished and innovative teaching and methods of instruction in design." In 1997, he was the first recipient of the Jens Jensen Professorship in Landscape and Urbanism at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Architecture. He was also a visiting professor at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Art in Copenhagen in 1998 and at the KTH School of Architecture in Stockholm in 1999.