HAPPY NEW YEAR !!!!

Freshmen

Freshmen, Riyasp Bhandari and Shayne Noronha discuss beginning collaborative research projects with the director of Reset, Garth Falconer, and senior landscape architect at Waterfront Auckland, Alan Grey.

More Writing

MLA students Xinxin Wang and Alex Guo meet with author Tony Garnier to discuss how their research work on Aucklands growth could contribute to Tonys forthcoming book 'Auckland at the Crossroads".

Writing

Recent graduate Betsy Kettle meeting Clare Chapman, editor of Landcape New Zealand, to discuss her research work on community based recycling depots.   

Workshop Dates

Week	Date	Event
6	10 th of April	First workshop. Masters studio
12	5th June	Second Workshop. Masters studio
6	28th August	Third Workshop. Masters Studio
12	23rd October	Fourth workshop. Masters Studio

Fred Tschopp Jnr. Aug. 13, 1931 – Dec. 30, 2014

Fred Tschopp Jnr and the 2013 Fred Tschopp Snr. Scholarship winner, Grace He.

It is with great sadness that we have learnt of the death of Fred Tschopp Jnr. Many of the people who met Fred in New Zealand will remember an energetic character, forceful, clear-sighted, with a fondness for practical jokes; the memory of drinking hallucinogenic apple martinis at the Tam O Shanter in Los Feliz still lingers. But very few of us realised his extraordinary career in America, he was an attorney at law, a successful businessman working with a number of defence corporations and a colonel in the U.S. Marines.

 In New Zealand he is best known as the founder of the Fred Tschopp Snr. Scholarship for the Masters of Landscape Architecture at Unitec.  Fred’s father, Fred Tschopp Snr, had practiced landscape architecture in New Zealand during the late 1920's but had disappeared from history. Then in 2001 the distinguisher historian John Adam, was asked by past president of the NZILA Michael Jones to decipher the signature on a landscape plan for the Prime Minister garden in Wellington. The deciphered name, Fred Tschopp, was the beginning of an extraordinary detective story that took 18 months for John to track down Fred Tschopps son, Fred Tschopp Jnr. at his holiday cabin at Big Bear, Los Angeles County.   Fred Jnr. had assiduously preserved his fathers archive, enabling John and the author to piece together a record of early 20^th century landscape architectural practice in New Zealand. Fred Snrs work in Auckland, Wellington and Rotorua, from 1928-1931, prefigured many of the tropes that landscape architects in New Zealand still work with; the multifunctional park, the uses of native horticulture to signal national identify and the acknowledgment of Maori culture in the urban realm. When John Adam and the author wished to visit America to research Fred Tschopp’s Snrs post war landscape practice, Fred Jnr. was extremely supportive. And in 2003, John and the author were awarded the Fulbright Senior Scholarship to visit Los Angeles to investigate Fred Tschopp Snrs landscape practice with the giant Californian utility, Los Angeles Water and Power. Fred Jnr. was extremely hospitably, both entertained us at his house in a Thousand Oaks, at his dad’s favorite places in the Valley and providing us with the missing pieces in our research of his father California practice.  As a result of our work in Los Angeles, we established Fred Snr role in the establishment of modernist landscape practice in large scale infrastructure projects in post war America.

Fred Jnr. was fascinated and energised by the rediscovery of his fathers work. Early in 2002 he began to discuss with Unitec the possibility of establishing a postgraduate scholarship for a Masters of Landscape Architecture student.  This resulted in the establishment of the Fred Tschopp Snr. Scholarship in 2003. The scholarship has been awarded to a number of high achieving graduates, enabling them carry out important research work. The award was made jointly with the first head of the MLA programme, Dr. Rod Barnett and then Dr. Peter Connolly. Fred Jnr. played a very hands on role with the endowment, carefully looking at all the applicant’s portfolios, and visiting New Zealand to personally interview the applicants and to award the winning scholarship.

Fred Jnr. had a deep love of the New Zealand landscape; he was born here, he was avid trout fisherman in New Zealand rivers and an honouree member of Arawa iwi.  He very much enjoyed working with us at Unitec, meeting the graduates in the MLA programme and with senior management at Unitec where he advocated for the landscape programme. His Unitec family will miss him but the legacy of his fathers work lives on.