Kathleen John-Alder, FASLA
Category: Knowledge
Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey

Kathleen John-Adler, of Rutgers University, received her nomination, in Knowledge, from the New Jersey Chapter. John-Adler inspires colleagues and students to think deeply and critically about their actions toward the land. A talented artist and award-winning practitioner with a remarkable grasp of the history of the profession and its methods over the past century, she is a born teacher with genuine insight into the nature of design and has a remarkable ability to explain it visually and in writing. Her examination of the work of Lawrence Halprin and Ian McHarg has increased our understanding of ecology in environmental discourse and expanded our appreciation of modernist design and its contribution to our profession. John-Alder's early career included an associate partnership with OLIN before moving into academia where her research dealt with the transformative role of environmentalism in the mid-20th-century landscape and the impact of climate change, including in the Arctic. She has earned her place in an elite circle of hybrid practitioner-scholars working at the frontiers of landscape architecture to discover its larger potential.