Knowlton School Director Dorothée Imbert was elevated to the American Society of Landscape Architects’ Council of Fellows (FASLA) for her exceptional contributions to the landscape architecture profession and society at large. Election to the Council of Fellows is among the highest honors the Society bestows on members and is based on their work, leadership and management, knowledge, and service.  

Imbert’s extensive scholarship and academic leadership have distinguished her career in the practice and discipline of landscape architecture. Over the past thirty years, she has written and lectured extensively on the emergence of the landscape architecture profession, modernist and contemporary landscape architecture, and the relationship between cities and productive landscapes.  

Imbert’s historical work has straddled scales from garden to urban design and connected formal and aesthetic ideas to their social and political contexts. She has authored the books The Modernist Garden in France (1993) and Between Garden and City: Jean Canneel-Claes and Landscape Modernism (2006), co-authored Garrett Eckbo: Modern Landscapes for Living (1996), and edited Food and the City: Histories of Culture and Cultivation (2015) and A Landscape Inventory: Michel Desvigne Paysagiste (2018) and published over 40 chapters, essays, and articles. 

In her academic leadership, Imbert has been an ambassador for landscape architecture and a champion of diversity and inclusion. As an educator, she has shaped landscape architecture programs, mentored faculty, and taught scores of students in design and history. She has held leadership positions at Harvard University, Washington University in St. Louis, and The Ohio State University. At each institution, she has had increasing responsibilities and made a demonstrated impact on the profession. In naming Imbert as one of the 25 Most Admired Educators in Landscape Architecture for 2020, DesignIntelligence noted her “high standards in every aspect of the profession—design, literature, research, technology, theory.”  

Throughout her career, Imbert has dedicated significant energy to making landscape architecture known to allied disciplines and to the wider public. She has lectured extensively, including at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Collège de France in Paris. She has served on committees at Dumbarton Oaks and Novartis Pharmaceutical alongside architects Henry Cobb and Bill Lacy.  

In 2021, Imbert was invited to chair the inaugural Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize, organized by The Cultural Landscape Foundation. This biennial prize, the landscape equivalent of the architecture Pritzker Prize, celebrates the laureate’s work and also raises the visibility of landscape architecture as a global, cultural, and professional practice.