New Chapters: Hood Design Studio’s Alma Du Solier on Landscape, Legacy, and Holding on to Your Power
Potrait by Seymour Lu
By Kate Mazade
Alma Du Solier is a Mexican-American landscape architect and studio director at Hood Design Studio, an award-winning cultural practice merging landscape architecture, public art, and urban design in Oakland, California. She is an architect in her home country Mexico and has been practicing in the US since 1999, leading the design of diverse landscape projects in complex urban settings. She is a recurrent design instructor at UC Berkeley and is the board director for the Landscape Architecture Foundation.
In her interview Alma talks about designing new chapters for sites, empowering a great team, and working to have a positive impact on one person or site at a time.
KB: Tell me about your foundational years—where did you grow up, and what did you like to do as a kid?
ADS: I grew up in Monterrey, Mexico, three blocks from the ITESM campus, where I eventually went to study architecture. We lived in this neighborhood because my paternal grandfather had been a professor of history at the university, and he had received a house as one of the faculty incentives the then brand-new university had offered him when he moved his family from Mexico City to Monterrey in the mid-1950s. We lived two blocks from my grandparents’ home. My grandfather was an archaeologist, a ceramist, and a watercolor artist, who worked on archaeological digs and had an extensive collection of cultural objects–things like traditional masks and ceramic pieces — and visiting with him always felt like an adventure.
At some point, he began teaching me watercolors, but even though those lessons didn’t last long, I was directly exposed to a world that felt very creative but scientific at the same time and almost magical. I loved the idea of exploring the world and making things like my grandfather. I enjoyed playing with clay, drawing, sewing, and building makeshift casitas from found pieces of wood and old bed sheets where my sister, my brothers, and I would play for hours. My parents were also very resourceful because we never had a lot of money for luxuries, and thus everything around me seemed to be something either my father or my mother had made themselves. Following the family way of doing things, every present I gave to people during my youth was always something I made myself.
Eucalyptus Soliloquy, Cornerstone Gardens, 2003. Photography by W. Hood.
Native Vegetation in Zacatecas Government City, 2009. Photo courtesy of Alma Du Solier.
How did you get your start in landscape architecture?
I graduated from architecture school in Mexico in December of 1994, and in January of 1995, the Zapatista movement exploded in my country, drying up pretty much instantly all foreign investment into Mexico. We fell into the deepest economic recession to that date and all construction stopped abruptly. I was one of the few lucky graduates of my 100-person class who already had a job before graduation. I had been hired by a development company to create renderings for their projects –back in the day when we were rendering by hand. It was a job I originally had hoped would be temporary since it wasn’t at a design firm, and I wanted to be a designer. But because of the economic downturn, my job instead focused on construction management. I was no longer rendering as I had before graduation and instead placed all my energy into rebuilding the construction budget for the single project that remained active in the company once the recession started. I spent days creating endless spreadsheets, talking to the original suppliers and contractors, some of which were US companies, and finding new ones in the Mexican market that could help us stay within budget while maintaining the same design intent.
The work was still interesting, and it turned out I was good at it, but I wanted to do something more obviously focused on design. So, after about two years, I decided to apply for graduate school abroad, more than anything, to wait until design firms could hire young designers again and to satisfy my second passion: independence.
I applied for a scholarship sponsored by my country and discovered that because the agency’s funding was dedicated to science and technology, architecture did not fully qualify, but landscape architecture did. Up to that point, I had never heard of the term and so, when I finally landed at UC Berkeley to begin my MLA the next fall, my education was also an eye-opening experience on what landscape architecture actually is. I fell in love with it completely.
I constantly joke that whereas architecture, with buildings living in a fully controlled envelope, exacerbates my tendency to want to control everything—landscape is therapeutic to me. I learned that designing a piece of landscape, where we cannot avoid engaging with larger natural and social systems, exposed me to the true power designers have. We are only really able to set the tone for the new configuration of a site, a new layer of each site’s urban palimpsest and the real beauty is in how the environment and the people using the space will make it theirs and transform it with time and use. It felt like a fantastic challenge and a great endeavor to dedicate a life to building “new chapters” in real places instead of envisioning finite creations.
“We are only really able to set the tone for the new configuration of a site, a new layer of each site’s urban palimpsest and the real beauty is in how the environment and the people using the space will make it theirs and transform it with time and use. ”
How did you get to Hood Design Studio? What are you focused on these days?
My connection with Hood Design Studio is long and divided into chapters. I studied landscape architecture at Berkeley, where Walter Hood is a professor. From the beginning of my program, I was drawn to his way of seeing urban landscapes as expressions of the different cultures that inhabit them but also reflections of previous power structures that have imposed their views onto people and the land. I became a reader in a class he used to teach called “Cultural Landscapes,” and felt like for the first time I had a language to describe how I understood the world. I worked as an intern at Hood Design Studio during the summer between my two years at Berkeley and began working as an entry-level designer as soon as I graduated in 1999. I was extremely lucky to be there when Hood Design Studio won the commission to design the open space for the new de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco with Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron. The studio back then was so small that even though I was right out of school, I ran the project hand-in-hand with Walter, interacting with the museum trustees and the world-renowned architects. It was an incredible experience that marked me and my career.
Eventually, I had to return to Mexico because my work permit expired. When I was invited as a guest lecturer at UC Berkeley, I returned to the Bay Area. I continued to collaborate with Hood Design Studio but found another job at a large firm that could sponsor my visa and where I could continue to lead large, complex projects.
Ten years later, I wanted to return to my design roots and asked Walter about returning to Hood Design Studio. This time I took the position of Studio Director and began the new chapter I’m currently in. I’m not only enjoying leading culturally rich projects in complex sites–like Hilltop Park on the tip of Yerba Buena Island in the middle of the San Francisco Bay, or the Double Consciousness marker at Princeton University–but also have the privilege of building a team that embraces our studio’s tri-partite focus, expanding beyond traditional landscape architecture into what we call a cultural practice. Our team is very diverse, not only in our backgrounds but also in our professions, which is extremely exciting to me.
Ruin, YBI Hilltop Park, 2023. Photo courtesy of Alma Du Solier.
Tree house overview, NVIDIA, 2021. Photography by Jason O’Rear.
Gray paving and landscaping, NVIDIA, 2021. Photo courtesy of Alma Du Solier.
Looking back at it all, what have been the biggest challenges? How did you both manage through perceived disappointments or setbacks?
I think the biggest challenges have been creating and empowering a great design team. I became a team leader relatively early in my career, and I’ve been looking into team dynamics ever since. Design is not a solo endeavor; building a strong team is the only way to be a successful designer.
In my experience, it is not difficult to find creative talent; the real challenge lies in facilitating a studio culture that nurtures each individual to be a contributing team member. I’ve had moments in which we all flow, and the projects–despite any difficulty or disappointment in the actual work—remain extremely fun and interesting. On the other hand, when the team dynamics are broken, the work suddenly feels a burden.
There is no real recipe for “fixing” a team, but in circumstances of disappointment, the best solution for me and my team has always been talking about it and dealing with it head-on. I’ve been very lucky to share this profession with amazing colleagues, and the partners that I’ve had are the ones that support me and help me figure things out through constant conversations and discussions. Sometimes these conversations are easy, and we all see the same approach; sometimes, they are very difficult, and a path forward is less clear. But talking and strategizing together is the only way I know to reset us as a team so we can act together to tackle any given challenge.
“There is no real recipe for ‘fixing’ a team, but in circumstances of disappointment, the best solution for me and my team has always been talking about it and dealing with it head-on. ”
What have you also learned in the last six months?
I have learned to truly understand that nothing is fully to my credit or my fault.
What are you most excited about right now?
I’m excited about building a legacy at Hood Design Studio. As the most senior person in the studio, I see my new challenge to not only build the team and deliver amazing design with a conscience but also to think about how my voice and the voices of others on my team build on the ethos that Walter has set for Hood Design Studio.
Who are you admiring now and why?
I’m really inspired by Stacey Abrams right now. I read a quote from her when she lost her 2022 race for Governor of Georgia: “You can’t give up the power you have trying to get the power you want.” I admire that she has stayed true to her principles despite the losses in her gubernatorial campaigns. She has transformed the political arena in Georgia–and I would argue a bit the country—by not losing sight of her power. It resonated tremendously with me on a personal level. I feel we live in a constant power-balancing struggle, both as women and as designers, and we must keep at it despite setbacks because we are responsible for making things better.
What is the impact you’d like to have on the world? What is your core mission? And, what does success in that look like to you?
I have never seen myself as someone focused on impacting the whole world per se, but rather I aspire to have a positive impact on one person or a site at a time. When it comes to my work, I zero in–I guess obsess is another word for it—on every beautiful detail, from the joints on paving patterns to the way materials come together in our custom site structures. I believe those small details add up to create a gorgeous design. I guess my approach to success in life is similar; I try to be present with all the people I engage, and I hope that some of my work and life ethics might resonate and help others help themselves be the best they can be.
Scarpa Garden, Biennale, 2023. Photography by Clelia Cada Muro.
Overall aerial landscape of Intuit Dome, 2023. Render by Hood Design Studio.
Finally, what advice do you have for those starting their career? Would your advice be any different for women?
Try everything, and then try it again. I constantly hear from my younger staff and my students that they don’t want to be pigeonholed into something they do well. They perceive it as limiting or not what they want for the rest of their careers. I say, let people label you an expert in anything you do great; they recognize you as an asset. If you feel that the label they have given you does not fully define you, then continue to do that work but, at the same time, add more skills and other areas of expertise to your work. Do not ask to be “given the opportunity” to do something you are not doing at this moment; just start doing it on top of what you already do. Since what you do well is easier and faster for you, dedicate your time to expanding the ways you can contribute to your team in impactful and meaningful ways. Your team leaders see your talent and–despite your perceptions—typically try to place you in a position where you have the power to excel. Understand your strengths as an advantage and grow from there instead of trying to pivot to where you perceive the “grass is greener.”
I’d say the same thing to women starting their careers: allow what you do well to be a platform to build upon and a way to claim more power. And power is what we women really need to claim in this and any other profession.