2025 Fellows: Lauren Meier, FASLA, Boston Chapter

Landscape Preservation Consultant, Concord, MA
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Lauren Meier has successfully deployed a comprehensive array of methods-scholarship, practice, teaching, technical review and assistance-to increase the knowledge of landscape architectural history, improve historic landscapes, and to share this knowledge with the world. As the first historical landscape architect to serve in the National Park Service, she expanded preservation's consideration to go beyond buildings and include cultural landscapes and wrote the first standards and guidelines for the preservation of historic landscapes across the United States. The Historic Landscape Initiative was recognized with a Presidential Design Achievement Award from the National Endowment for the Arts, an ASLA Honor Award in Communications, and an NPS Professional Achievement Award. Her list of other contributions is extensive. She led the award-winning restoration of Frederick Law Olmsted's Fairsted, now a National Park Service site. She developed new methodologies to help National Parks nationwide address contemporary challenges, demonstrated in work that she led in Acadia National Park and Woodlawn Cemetery. Lauren has contributed to dozens of articles, technical reports, and books; she has given nearly 100 lectures to local and national audiences; she wrote and delivered curriculum for third graders; and she continues to be an active contributor to her own towns' historical commissions. As a volunteer on committees and as an adviser to local, state, and national programs, Lauren has contributed her expertise in preservation practice to help communities understand and care for their cultural resources. And as a mentor to younger practitioners, Lauren has trained many emerging professional landscape architects who have gone on to successful careers, extending her influence on landscape preservation practice nationwide.