CGLHS Lecture: The Modern Landscapes of Robert Royston

Robert Royston (1918–2008) was one of America's most distinguished landscape architects during the post-war period. His design work and university teaching in the years following World War II helped define and establish California landscape modernism. Royston is best known for his public works, especially city parks, however, he also designed innovative gardens over the course of his long and productive career. These outdoor living spaces were enlivened by the shapes and rhythms of modern art and characterized by fine detail, attention to comfort, and beauty. 

Mill Valley garden by Robert Royston

About our speaker

JC Miller is a licensed landscape architect, a writer, and an educator. He is a partner at Vallier Design Associates, a landscape architecture and planning practice located in the San Francisco Bay area. He is the former Director for the Landscape Architecture Certificate Program at UC Berkeley Extension where he developed a curriculum and program for Historic and Cultural Landscape Preservation and Management.  Mr. Miller continues to work academically; he developed and teaches an on-line course in landscape design history for UCLA Extension.

Mr. Miller is a co-author of Modern Public Gardens: Robert Royston and the Suburban Park and Robert Royston: Landscape Architect, both examine the innovative postwar design work of Robert Royston. He has contributed essays on postwar California design to Eden, the journal of the California Garden and Landscape History Society and to published collections including; Edith Heath: Philosophies and William Krisel’s Palm Springs: The Language of Modernism.