The University of New Mexico NEWS RELEASE |
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Contact: Carolyn Gonzales 277-5920
Dec. 18, 2008
He talked about Goddard’s original rocket sitting unobtrusively outside a Roswell museum and how small town New Mexico still possesses 1950s post-war infrastructure. Only then did Morrow reveal that he’d received the Stewart Udall Cultural Landscape Preservation Award from the New Mexico Heritage Preservation Alliance. Morrow’s had his own firm, Morrow Reardon Wilkinson and Miller, Ltd. since 1973. He pursued landscape architecture after discovering he enjoyed the 3D world and open spaces. “Landscape design is a combination of manmade and natural elements. We proceed with the assumption that vegetation will grow – and it does – which allows us to set up a process and watch it mature. Four or five years later, landscapes develop their own personality. They take off on their own,” he said. Morrow is a Fellow in the American Society of Landscape Architects, the first UNM graduate and first native New Mexican to receive this honor. Victoria Jacobson, historic architect for the National Park Service, submitted Morrow’s name for the award. Morrow has conducted research on historic landscapes – often for the NPS – since the 1980s. Morrow has served as the director of the Registry of Historic Landscapes for the New Mexico NPS since 1980. “There are files of some 300 archaic landscapes in the state, each one of which could be a thesis project,” Morrow said. Morrow said that although much of New Mexico’s history has been outlined, much of the knowledge to be gained in Central New Mexico is yet to be discovered. “There are some 300 Pueblos in Chupadera Mesa,” he said, of the Socorro landmark. Morrow also sowed the seeds that established the landscape architecture program at UNM. He started teaching at UNM in 1975 and by 1977 the seeds of the landscape architecture program first sprang up in the form of undergraduate coursework in the field. In 2003 the Landscape Architecture Accrediting Board reviewed the program and granted formal accreditation for a full six-year term. ### |
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Landscape Architect Baker Morrow, adjunct associate professor, School of Architecture and Planning, talks about how the kind of social innovation generally reserved for cities took place in Artesia, N.M., when the small town wanted and found the will to change. Civic will guided them – with help from Morrow’s firm – to create a main street where pedestrians can walk from “pool of shade to pool of shade” with wide sidewalks, fountains and places to sit.