2023 Class of Fellows, John Kett, Boston Chapter
Reed Hilderbrand, Cambridge, MA
John Kett's body of work attests to his belief that deep study, careful listening, and synthesizing many voices strengthens the work of landscape architects and advances their art and practice. As a principal and managing partner at Reed Hilderbrand, John's design leadership has delivered projects where big ideas find expression in carefully resolved details. Throughout his twenty-five-year career, he has preserved places of cultural significance, revealed sites obscured by history, and celebrated landscapes whose meaning is only now emerging through work with communities. John is also recognized for his generosity in sharing both process and work product with students, ASLA members, and the larger landscape architecture community through site tours, workshops, panel discussions, and other presentations. Among his many important works are: Interpreting Louisiana's Ecology Through the Experience of Art, New Orleans Museum of Art Besthoff Sculpture Garden Expansion, where John connected the extension to the historic City Park through an approach of "continuity and differentiation," reinterpreting riparian and coastal landscapes; Placing Community in Conversation with Olmsted, Franklin Park Action Plan, Boston, balances investment in ecological management and governance with new interventions that help the park to serve more people more equitably in this historic cultural resource; and Framing a Posthumous Collaboration, Marshcourt, England, where the work on this Edwardian Estate discovers, renews, and builds on the distinctive chalk geology of this landscape and the original intentions of its creators.
