In honor of the late Professor Emeritus Roger Martin, the landscape architecture community has created the Roger B. Martin Travel Prize through the College of Design. This annual award will allow early career professionals to pursue foreign or domestic travel as a means to further their professional development.
Recruited in 1966 by prominent Minnesota architect and chair of the University of Minnesota School of Architecture Ralph Rapson, Martin was responsible for starting the landscape architecture programs at the University. Martin worked with his colleagues Professor Emeritus Roger Clemence and Herb Baldwin to design a curriculum that emphasized collaboration and a systematic, analytical approach to problem-solving, which allowed students to understand and resolve the inherent problems of a site and design program.
Martin was an avid traveler and studied the landscapes of antiquity, tirelessly sketching and diagramming their forms as lessons to influence his own design and teaching. The evidence of that work exists in detailed sketchbooks now found in the University of Minnesota Archives and culminated in a self-published book, Illusion in Exterior space: Perception Manipulation and Placemaking on the Land.
His dedication to this research and love of travel is honored with the creation of The Roger Bond Martin Travel Prize. In addition to providing early career professionals with the means to travel, the prize is intended to enhance the recipient's skills in observation of, participation in, and understanding of diverse cultural perspectives, differing responses to local environments, varied aesthetic expressions, and a range of technical solutions to environmental problems.
On December 21, 2020, the winter solstice, renowned landscape architect and Professor Emeritus Roger Bond Martin, FASLA, FAAR, passed away at age 84.
In 1972, Clinton Navarro Hewitt was hired at the University of Minnesota and quickly promoted to Associate VP of Planning. For the next 37 years, Hewitt would shape the U of M’s campuses across the state through dozens of landmark building projects—including Scholar’s Walk, David M. Lilly Plaza, and the Weisman Art Museum—and impact the lives of countless students and colleagues. To celebrate his career of building community and expanding the field of landscape architecture, the Department of Landscape Architecture has worked with the UMN Archives to create the Clinton N. Hewitt archive.
Longtime professor, mentor, and leader in the Twin Cities design community Joe Favour (B.L.A. ’92) began his appointment as head of the Department of Landscape Architecture this June.
