Walter Hood, image courtesy of Hood Design Studio

Walter Hood, a Fellow at the American Academy in Rome and a winner selected to represent the United States at the 2010 Venice Biennale, has been selected to create an integrated sculptural work for the Expo Line Downtown Santa Monica Station.

Hood is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was chair of the Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning Department from 1998 to 2002. He is also the Goldman Sachs Design Fellow for the Smithsonian Institute (Washington, D.C.), where he is assisting with the reconceptualization of the museum’s public spaces.

Hood has exhibited his artwork and has created projects at venues that include the Broad Museum, California African American Museum, Oakland Museum of Art, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, De Young Museum, Harvard University, Van Allen Institute, San Jose Public Art Program, Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, Rice University, California Crafts Museum, and the African American Historical and Cultural Society.

He has received the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award for Landscape Design, American Institute of Architects (AIA) Award for Collaborative Achievement, Robert Taylor Fellowship from MIT, USA Character Approved Honor from NBC Universal USA, and was a finalist for the President’s Park South Design Competition with the National Planning Commission.  He holds a Master of Fine Arts from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago; both a Master of Landscape Architecture and a Master of Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley and a Bachelor of Science in Landscape Architecture from North Carolina A&T State University. In addition to teaching at the University of California, Berkeley, Hood has taught at Harvard University Graduate School of Design and at the University of Karlshrue (Germany).

Hood is one of eight artists commissioned by Metro Creative Services to design original artworks for seven new stations being constructed for the second phase of the Metro Expo Line. Check back often! More information about each of the artists will follow in the coming weeks.