James Corner, the award-winning landscape architect whose New York-based design firm Field Operations delivered celebrated landmarks such as Manhattan's High Line and Chicago's Navy Pier, will accept the 2023 Richard Neutra Award for Professional Excellence and give a keynote lecture at Cal Poly Pomona.

The award ceremony and lecture will start at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 1, in the Ursa Major Suite at the Bronco Student Center. A livestream of the proceedings will be on Zoom (Zoom ID: 882 093 9656, Passcode: CPP).

Corner is known for his work creating landmark public spaces uniting urban landscapes with green open spaces that evoke the natural wild. His firm's notable projects include the High Line, a 1.45-mile-long elevated linear public park and greenway in Manhattan, and Chicago's Navy Pier, opened in 1916 on Lake Michigan and reimagined into a waterfront promenade that has become one of the city's top attractions. Locally, his firm designed Tongva Park, a 6.2-acre urban park near the Santa Monica Pier that features an overlook with views of the Pacific Ocean.

Other prominent projects include: San Francisco's Presidio Tunnel Tops, a 14-acre park of meadows and walking trails with viewpoints of the Golden Gate Bridge; the 2016 redesign of Cleveland's Public Square, the 10-acre historic city center originally constructed in 1796 under founder Gen. Moses Cleveland; London's South Park at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, a 560-acre public park and sports complex built for the 2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics; Hong Kong's Victoria Dockside, a 3 million-square-foot global art and design district; and Qianhai New District, a new city in Shenzhen, Guangdong, built on 4,500 acres of reclaimed land that today functions as a modern industry cooperation zone along the Pearl River Delta.

The Neutra Award is conferred annually by the university's Department of Architecture. Past honorees include former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and Pritzker Architecture Prize laureates Frank Gehry, Tadao Ando, Toyo Ito and Renzo Piano, the first architect in Italy's history to be appointed senator for life.

"The Richard Neutra Award means a great deal to me," Corner said. "I feel extremely honored to join the roster of esteemed past recipients. Neutra represented a view of architecture, landscape and urbanism as an integrated whole, a unity that served to advance both social and environmental good. His work is an inspiration, pointing toward design innovation in the service of improving quality of life for all."

Named after acclaimed modernist architect Richard Neutra, the award honors architects and individuals who have dedicated their careers toward the research, design and development of innovative environments in which we live, work and play. Neutra taught at Cal Poly Pomona in the College of Environmental Design until his passing in 1970. The college is the caretaker of his former family residence in Silver Lake, the Neutra VDL Studio and Residences, a National Historic Landmark.

Corner's work has been exhibited at the New York Museum of Modern Art, the Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum, the National Building Museum, the Royal Academy of Art in London, and the Venice Biennale. He is also the author of "The High Line: Foreseen/Unforeseen" (Phaidon, 2015), "The Landscape Imagination (Princeton, 2014)," and "Taking Measures Across the American Landscape" (Yale, 1996).

Corner is the recipient of numerous awards, most notably the ASLA Design Medal, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Architecture, and the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award. He holds honorary doctorates in design from the Technical University of Munich and Manchester Metropolitan University.

Corner is emeritus professor of landscape architecture and urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design, where he served on the faculty since 1990, and as professor and chairman 2000-2013. He currently sits on the board of the Urban Design Forum and the Government Advisory Board of Shenzhen and is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

High Line in Manhattan, a 1.45-mile-long elevated linear public park and greenway. Photo credit: Field Operations Guiwan Park in Qianhai New District, a new city in Shenzhen, Guangdong, China. Photo credit: Field Operations An aerial view of a mangrove maze in Guiwan Park in Qianhai. Photo credit: Field Operations Tongva Park in Santa Monica. Photo credit: Field Operations