Walter Wood
Walter Wood

Walter Hood recently won a public art competition to design a planned solar energy array at the North Campus of the University of Buffalo in New York. Hood, a 20-year member of Berkeley’s landscape architecture faculty, earned two graduate degrees here (M.L.A. ’89, and M. Arch. ’89).

UB’s solar array will be comprised of 5,000 solar panels and will cover roughly seven acres in a strand reminiscent of molecules entwined in DNA. The array will be constructed by the New York Power Authority and will generate 1.1 megawatts of power for four campus complexes housing 2,000 students, and will reduce that university’s carbon emissions by more than 500 metric tons per year.

Through his Oakland firm, Hood Design, Walter Hood has helped Oakland and San Francisco revitalize 10 local parks and designed the five acres of landscape surrounding the new De Young museum in Golden Gate Park.