Peter Walker (landscape architect)

American public spaces designer

Peter Walker (born 1932 in Pasadena) is an American landscape architect and the founder of PWP Landscape Architecture.

Walker grew up in California, where he attended the University of California, Berkeley. Walker started out studying journalism but quickly changed his field and received a Bachelor of Science in Landscape Architecture in 1955. He did graduate studies at the University of Illinois, where he studied under Stanley White. Walker attended the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where he received his master's degree in Landscape Architecture in 1957 and won the school's Jacob Weidenmann Prize that year.

At Harvard University, Walker had been deeply influenced by his professor, Hideo Sasaki. After graduating, he worked for Sasaki. Shortly thereafter, they both went into partnership to form Sasaki Walker Associates in 1957. Walker and Sasaki went their separate ways in 1983, and Walker entered a partnership with landscape architect Martha Schwartz. In the early 1990s, Walker formed Peter Walker and Partners. The company developed into an interdisciplinary firm that employs around thirty to forty landscape architects. The company has received many awards and co designed the World Trade Center Memorial in New York with architect Michael Arad. Walker designed the garden for the Nasher Sculpture Center. In 2013 he was involved in a public argument with the architect of a neighboring building, Museum Tower, because the glare from the glass was damaging the vegetation. Walker described it as "public desecration". Peter Walker is also a co author of Invisible Gardens, which touches on the modernist movement in the United States and the comparison of other landscapes to those in Europe. The book discusses influential landscape architects, including Sasaki.