The U.S. Commission of Fine Arts is pleased to announce that on 17 September 2012, the President appointed Alex Krieger and Elizabeth K. Meyer to serve four-year terms on the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts in Washington, D.C. The President reappointed Earl A. Powell III on 30 August 2012 to serve a third four-year term on the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts. Mr. Powell has served as Chairman of the Commission since May 2005.
Alex Krieger FAIA is an architect and urban designer whose career has combined teaching and practice in working to improve the quality of place in major urban areas. He is a founding principal of Chan Krieger Sieniewicz, a design firm established in 1984 that spanned the disciplines of architecture, urban design, and public space planning, and merged with NBBJ in 2010. Mr. Krieger is a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where he has taught since 1977, and served as associate chairman of the Department of Architecture and chairman of the Department of Urban Planning and Design. He has written and edited several books and essays on American cities, including A Design Primer for Towns and Cities (1990), Mapping Boston (1999), Remaking the Urban Waterfront (2004), and Urban Design (2009). He is a frequent advisor to mayors and their planning staffs, and has served on many civic boards and public commissions such as the Boston Civic Design Commission, the Providence Capital Center Commission, the Large City Planners Institute, and the Joseph Riley Institute. Mr. Krieger is a graduate of Cornell University and Harvard University; he served as an advisory director of the Mayor’s Institute on City Design of the National Endowment for the Arts, and continues to serve as a design peer reviewer for the U.S. General Services Administration. He is a fellow of the American Institute of Architects.
Elizabeth K. Meyer FASLA is an associate professor of landscape architecture at the University of Virginia School of Architecture, where she has taught since 1993, serving as department chairman and the director of the graduate landscape architecture program. She holds degrees from the University of Virginia and Cornell University; she taught previously at Cornell and the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, and worked as a landscape architect for the EDAW and Hanna/Olin design firms. Ms. Meyer is engaged nationally as a studio critic and lecturer; she has published widely on contemporary landscape design practice and theory, exploring such issues as the social and aesthetic implications of creating new parks on toxic industrial sites, and the role of aesthetics in sustainable design. A recipient of a Dumbarton Oaks Fellowship, she is currently completing a book, Groundwork: Practices of Landscape Architecture. She was a member of the competition-winning team in 2010 for the grounds of the St. Louis Gateway Arch and recently served on the jury for the National Mall Design Competition sponsored by the Trust for the National Mall. She was named a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects in 2003, and the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture in 2012.