Sometimes messier is better.

Walter Hood's ideal landscape is messy. Its essence comes from the land and the people who occupy it. He wants it to be the kind of place where people feel free: free to loiter, sleep, walk the dog or just be.

Unconventional may be a good term to describe Hood, professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley. As the Harlow O. Whittemore guest lecturer at the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and Environment, Hood pointed out that he doesn't have an office, but does maintain a studio. He doesn't tag his work with conventional labels, but uses a litany of descriptors to identify his projects.

Hood is widely admired for his success in designing beautiful places that speak to ecological health and the values of local communities - from Oakland and Los Angeles to the rural Carolinas. He collaborated with Swiss architectural firm Herzog and de Meuron and San Francisco architects Fong and Chan to design the site plan for San Francisco's de Young Museum, newly opened to international acclaim for returning the museum landscape to public use and for its strong relationship between building and site.

People rush to city centers, because they doníï¿ ½t understand the edges of cities, said Hood. This is why hybrid spaces, as he calls them, are so important to blend city and wilderness in a healthy, regenerative way. They also result in unique solutions to understanding time and place in a city, where recreation and infrastructure can exist together.

"New York City's Central Park is a great hybrid space. It has gardens, streets and plazas that have evolved over time due to the influence of people and the differences in people," he said.

Hood urges students to question the conventional vocabulary of landscape architecture, and not to let terminology limit the design. For example, his projects include as many terms as there are uses for the spaces he designs.

Among his many designs:

• Jackson Hole Performing Center in Jackson, Wyoming. "We took into consideration the glaciated moraines and the ruggedness of the place and the people. The ground became an enclosure for people, a facilitator for action," he said.
• The Poplar Street Yard in Macon, Georgia. An urban revitalization project, this antebellum community - now facing hard times - needed an infusion of nature and a connection to the earth. His design incorporated a green boulevard and sidewalks.
• Splash Pad Park Garden Street. A 1.2-acre plot of land bordering a major freeway in Oakland, California, the park is now the site of a thriving Saturday market featuring fountains, seating, sidewalks and a neighborhood garden.

Hood said he takes inspiration from the blues, the improvisations of jazz, community interaction and ethnicity.

The Whittemore Lecture, established in 1977, was named in honor of Professor Emeritus Harlow O. Whittemore, former Chair of the SNRE's Landscape Architecture Program.

By Nancy Davis