Cultural Landscape Foundation Adds Landscape Architect Joseph Yamada to Its New Pioneers Oral History Profiles

"Joe Yamada is a landscape architect of great depth, nuance and finesse. This oral history will help introduce his considerable career and body of work to a wider audience." "?uCharles Birnbaum, founder and president of The Cultural Landscape Foundation

The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF) has added a 10th landscape architect to its online Oral History project. The latest addition focuses on the 50-year career of San Diego landscape architect Joseph Yamada. Mr. Yamada's work includes SeaWorld, Seaport Village, Embarcadero Marina Park and La Jolla Village Plaza. He also has half a century of campus planning for the University of California, San Diego and numerous other campus, including San Diego City College and Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Note: In the March 2008 LASN issue, Leslie McGuire interviewed Joe Yamada and Pat Caughey for a profile on the Wimmer, Yamada and Caughey firm: "Three Iconic Careers: Wimmer, Yamada and Caughey", click here to view. Wimmer Yamada and Caughey and ONA have since merged. The new partnership is headed by Patrick Caughey, FASLA, and Dennis Otsuji, FASLA.

Mr. Yamada studied landscape architecture at UC Berkeley, and learned from where Modernist instructors like Thomas Church, Garrett Eckbo and Lawrence Halprin.

After graduating in 1954, he joined the office of Harriet Wimmer, the first woman landscape architect in commercial practice in San Diego. In 1960, the two became partners and renamed the firm Wimmer Yamada, a name they kept even after Harriet Wimmer retired.

This CLF oral history is 80 minutes of Mr. Yamada discusses his life, influences, and philosophy, including his studies at Berkeley, his professional partnership with Harriet Wimmer and other career highlights. He also relates his experience in a World War II Japanese Internment Camp and breaking racial barriers.

The Yamada Oral History includes a downloadable transcript of the interviews featured on the website. Also available are reflections by Yamada's friends, family, colleagues, collaborators and co-workers about his life, career and legacy.

The series is an outgrowth of the Pioneers of American Landscape Design Project and currently includes oral histories with Laurie Olin, Shlomo Aronson, Edward Daugherty, Stuart Dawson, M. Paul Friedberg, Lawrence Halprin, Carol Johnson, Cornelia Oberlander and James van Sweden. These oral histories document and preserve the first-hand perspectives of these accomplished landscape architects. They are available at no charge.

The Pioneers Oral History series is the recipient of a 2009 National Endowment for the Arts Design Arts grant.