Frederick Law Olmsted Lecture: Peter Latz, “Pioneering New Territory”

Fireworks over the Landscape Park Duisburg Nord. Photo via Latz+Partner

Peter Latz studied landscape architecture at the Technical University of Munich, and landscape architecture and planning at RWTH Aachen. Since founding his firm as a studio for landscape architecture and planning in 1968 with his wife Anneliese, he has been concerned primarily with ecological urban renewal. Latz + Partner has focused on post-industrial sites since the mid-1980s and first earned a worldwide reputation with the much-lauded Landscape Park Duisburg Nord in 2002. Abandoned in 1985 after decades of intense industrial activity, the 180-hectare Thyssen ironworks site was repurposed by Latz + Partner into a people’s park and became a vivid part of the city. In his lecture, Latz will discuss that project as well as the Ariel Sharon Park in Tel Aviv, which since 2004 has been in the process of transformation from roadside landfill to terraced paradise under Latz + Partner’s guidance. The Landscape Park Duisburg Nord and Ariel Sharon Park received the Green Good Design Award in 2009 and 2010, respectively.

For his life’s work, Peter Latz has been recognized by the Green Good Design People Award in 2010; the TOPOS Landscape Award in 2013; the Friedrich-Ludwig-von-Sckell Ring of Honor, awarded by the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts, in 2014; and the IFLA Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe Award in 2016. In February 2015, Peter and Anneliese Latz became honorary fellows of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). Since 2011, the office has been run by their son, architect and landscape architect Tilman Latz.

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