Chris Wilson

Regents Professor of Landscape Architecture, Chris Wilson, is the former J.B. Jackson Chair of Cultural Landscape Studies and founding director of the UNM Historic Preservation and Regionalism Program, and served as president of the Vernacular Architecture Forum, an international organization focused on the study and preservation of everyday buildings and cultural landscapes.

Since retiring from full time teaching in mid-2018, Wilson continues to advise students, and to teach the History and Theory of Landscape Architecture (LA 461/561) and a study abroad course in Paris each May, French Landscape and Urban Design (LA 411/511). He is also at work on a monograph about the leading architecture and urban design film, Moule and Polyzoides.

REURBANIZATION. His collaboration with Miguel Gandert, Stefanos Polyzoides and others, The Plazas of New Mexico (2011) analyzes the history of Pueblo, Hispanic and Anglo planning traditions--exemplified by 22 classic communities—while also surveying work over the past 15 years to revitalize existing community spaces and to create new ones. He is currently at work on A Field Guide to Cool Neighborhoods, a study of pedestrian neighborhoods in North America before and after the automobile; and has begun a study of French Eco-Urbanism since 2000.

CULTURAL LANDSCAPE STUDIES Everyday America: Cultural Landscape Studies After J. B. Jackson, co-edited with Paul Groth (2003), provides an assessment of Jackson’s contribution to the field, approaches to teaching landscape, the theoretical underpinnings of the field, and exemplary case studies of 20th Century landscapes. Drawn to Landscape: The Pioneering Work of J. B. Jackson, co-edited with Janet Mendelsohn (2015) features essays on Jackson’s career, and color portfolios of his drawings and teaching slides, including with and a DVD with two historic documentaries about Jackson, along with contemporary interviews about his ongoing impact on a half dozen professions and fields of study. Wilson was also co-organizer with Frédéric Pousin of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris, of PhotoPaysage /LandscapeRepresentation, a 2015 Conference and Exhibitions fostering a French / American Dialogue on the role of photography in changing conceptions of landscape.

SOUTHWEST. Wilson’s co-authored book, La Tierra Amarilla: Its History, Architecture and Cultural Landscape (1991), won the Downing Award from the Society of Architectural Historians, and was lauded as an early model for cultural landscape studies. Noted historian Ramon Gutierrez has called Wilson’s The Myth of Santa Fe: Creating a Modern Regional Traditions (1997), "... a truly superb book. It deserves a wide and serious reading. Literary scholars will be inspired by its narrative strategies. Historians will marvel at its engagement with theory and its rich and varied uses of archival sources. And bibliophiles and lovers of things Santa Fean will delight in the book’s wonderful vignettes." It received the Villagra Award from the Historical Society of New Mexico, and the Cummings Award from the Vernacular Architecture Forum. If The Myth of Santa Fe deconstructs that quintessential American tourist town, his Facing Southwest: The Life and Houses of John Gaw Meem (2001) sings the virtues of one of its leading citizens and of the regional design tradition he helped to sustain.