Diana Balmori, the founder of New York-based landscape architecture and urban design firm Balmori and Associates, passed away on Nov. 14, according to the current homepage of her firm’s website, which poignantly quotes Balmori’s own words from her book, Landscape Manifesto (Yale University Press, 2010): “Nature is the flow of change within which humans exist.”
Balmori attended an undergraduate architecture program at the University of Tucumán, in Argentina, and held a Ph.D. in urban history from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a certificate in landscape design from Radcliffe College. She was a lecturer at the Yale University School of Architecture (1983-2012) and at the Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Study (1990-2004), during which time she also established her practice, in 1990.
A fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects, Balmori and her firm completed memorable projects in cities all around the world, including the Silvercup Studios in New York (2005); The Garden that Climbs the Stairs in Bilbao, Spain (2009); and the Osaka National Museum of Art in Japan (2004) in collaboration with Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects, whose senior principals include her husband, Cesar Pelli, FAIA. Balmori also served on the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, in Washington, D.C., from 2003 to 2012.
In 2006, Balmori created Bal/Lab, a separate department within her practice that was dedicated to research for sustainable solutions, investigation of new technologies, and the experimentation of concept designs within the field of landscape architecture and urbanism.
Correction: This story initially reported that Diana Balmori was the principal of Balmori and Associates, when she is in fact the founder of the practice.
This story has been updated.