UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The Department of Landscape Architecture in Penn State College of Arts and Architecture’s Stuckeman School has named Günther Vogt, one of the most influential landscape architects of his generation, the recipient of the 2025-26 Bracken Fellowship.
Vogt will give a lecture titled “Terra Forma — Forming Landscape” at 4 p.m. March 30 in the Stuckeman Family Building Jury Space, exploring how landscapes are shaped by geological processes, infrastructure and human intervention across time. Drawing from his practice and teaching, Vogt will reflect on how landscape architecture can interpret, read and work with the ground as material and cultural archive.
An exhibit accompanying the lecture will run in the Rouse Gallery until April 17.
Originally trained as a gardener before studying landscape architecture at the International Technical College in Rapperswil, Switzerland, Vogt has built a body of work known for its intellectual rigor and ability to bridge science, culture and design.
As a passionate traveler and collector, Vogt approaches landscape as a field of inquiry where he constantly searches for ways to read and interpret the ground in response to the complex environmental and social conditions of contemporary cities.
“Few designers have reshaped how we understand landscape as profoundly as Professor Günther Vogt,” said Hong Wu, associate professor of landscape architecture at Penn State. “His work challenges us to see landscape not simply as scenery, but as a living archive of geology, infrastructure and human action.”
Vogt is the founder of VOGT Landscape Architects, which is an internationally recognized practice with branch offices in Zurich, London, Berlin and Paris. After emerging from the previous partnership with Dieter Kienast in 2000, the firm has worked on several major public landscapes and urban projects: the landscapes of Novartis Campus in Basel; public spaces in Zurich’s Europaallee district; the Masóala Rainforest Hall at Zoo Zurich; and several other major urban and cultural landscapes like Tate Modern’s Switch House landscape in London.
From 2005 to 2023, Vogt served as professor of landscape architecture at ETH Zurich, where he shaped generations of designers and helped establish one of the world’s most respected platforms for landscape architectural education and research.
In 2010, Vogt founded Case Studio VOGT, an interdisciplinary research platform linking design practice, teaching and scholarship. His work is distinguished by a unique methodology that shows landscape architecture as a geological and cultural archive that emphasizes observation, fieldwork and collaboration.
His work and contributions have been widely exhibited, published and recognized internationally. Most notably, Vogt received the Prix Meret Oppenheim in 2012, an award given to Swiss artists, architects and cultural mediators.