Walter Hood is the creative director and founder of Hood Design Studio, a cultural practice working across art, fabrication, design, landscape, research, and urbanism, in Oakland. Hood is also the David K. Woo Chair and a professor of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning at the University of California, Berkeley. He lectures on and exhibits professional and theoretical projects nationally and internationally. He was recently the spring 2020 Diana Balmori Visiting Professor at the Yale School of Architecture.

Hood creates urban spaces that resonate with and enrich the lives of current residents while also honoring communal histories. He melds architectural and fine arts expertise with a commitment to designing ecologically sustainable public spaces that empower marginalized communities. Over his career, he has transformed traffic islands, vacant lots, and freeway underpasses into spaces that challenge the legacy of neglect in urban neighborhoods. Through engagement with community members, he teases out natural and social histories as well as current residents’ shared patterns and practices of use and aspirations for a place.

Hood Design Studio’s award-winning work has been featured in publications including Dwell, Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Fast Company, and Architectural Digest, among others. Hood is a recipient of the 2017 Academy of Arts and Letters Architecture Award, 2019 Knight Foundation Public Spaces Fellowship, 2019 MacArthur Fellowship, and 2019 Dorothy & Lillian Gish Prize.