Résumé

Landscape Designer, Dan Kiley, Landscape Architect, Charlotte, VT.

Landscape Designer, Osmundson and Staley, San Francisco, CA.

Landscape Designer, Lawrence Halprin, Landscape Architect, San Francisco, CA, 1956; Haag worked for Halprin for about six months before opening his own practice.

Principal, Richard Haag, Landscape Architect, San Francisco, CA, c. 1957-1958.

Principal, Richard Haag, Landscape Architect, Seattle, WA; by 2015, Haag had designed more than 20 gardens for private clients in China.

Teaching

Assistant/Associate/Professor, University of Washington, Seattle, 1958- ; Haag founded the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Washington, Seattle, WA, 1963;

Professor Emeritus, University of Washington, Seattle, WA.

Professional Service

Haag belonged to the Executive Board of the Friends of the Market preservation group before 1963.

Professional Awards

Recipient, Fulbright Scholarship, Study in Japan, c. 1954.

Fellow, American Society of Landscape Architects (FASLA).

Honorary Member, American Institute of Architects (AIA), 1981.

Recipient, American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA), Presidents Award for Design Excellence for Gas Works Park, Seattle, WA.

Recipient, ASLA, Presidents Award for Design Excellence for The Sequence of Gardens at Bloedel Reserve, Bainbridge Island, WA, 1986.

Resident Scholar, American Academy, Rome, Italy, 1998.

Recipient, American Society of Landscape Architects, ASLA Medal, 2003.

Recipient, University of Washington, Seattle (UW), College of Built Environments, Distinguished Faculty Award for Lifetime Achievement, Seattle, WA, 2018. The College of Built Environments said of his achievement in teaching at the UW in 2018: "Richard ('Rich') Haag (1923-2018) joined the faculty in 1958 and was the founder (1964) and first chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture. An inspirational teacher, he developed and taught a “non-striving approach” to design based on his experiences in Japan. During a 60-year professional career, he produced a wide array of notable projects, including internationally recognized work at Bloedel Reserve and Seattle’s Gas Works Park." (See University of Washington, Seattle (UW), College of Built Environments.edu, "Ten honored with new CBE Distinguished Faculty Award for Lifetime Achievement," published 2018, accessed 08/02/2022.)

Archives

Richard Haag's papers, were donated to the University of Washington Libraries, Department of Special Collections by Richard Haag, Richard Haag Associates and Cheryl Trivison between 1993-2005. (A "Preliminary Guide to the Richard Haag Associates Records 1956-2004," exists online atAccessed 05/26/2011.)

Slides photographed by Haag were donated to the Visual Resources Collection of the College of Built Environments (CBE).Many of the books from Haag's library were donated in 2017 to the Built Environments Library at the University of Washington.

College

B.L.A., University of California, Berkeley (UCB), Berkeley, CA, 1950.

Master's of Landscape Architecture (M.L.A.), Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 1952.

College Awards

Haag was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship for study in Japan, for two years, during 1953 -1955; Haag learned of the Fulbright Program from Lester Albertson Collins (1914-1993), who served as Dean of the Landscape Architecture Department at Harvard University from 1950-1953. Just before World War II, Collins had traveled throughout the Far East with a friend, John Ormsbee Simonds (1913-2005), whom he had met while getting a Master's degree in Landscape Architecture at Harvard in the late 1930s. Presumably, Collins had felt enriched by his Far East travel, and thought that Haag would find it enlightening. Haag has said the experience in Japan "transformed his life," opening his mind toward another fundamental attitude toward nature; thereafter, he strived for his work to be "in balance with nature, a part of it, not in a superior position" to it. While in Japan, Haag toured various sites with Harvard Dean of Architecture, Walter Gropius (1883-1969). (See "Following Fulbright: a Conversation with Richard Haag and Samuel Shepherd," conversation sponsored by the UW Japan Studies Program and the College of Built Environments, University of Washington, Seattle, 03/11/2013.)

Relocation

Haag lived in Jeffersontown, KY, for the first years of his life. He moved to Berkeley, CA, to attend undergraduate school and moved to Cambridge, MA, to attend graduate school at Harvard. After college, he spent two years in Japan, before returning to the Bay Area to live and work. He remained here until 1958, when he moved to Seattle, to become a professor.

Haag built a new residence for himself and his wife in 2006.

He moved to Southern CA in 2017, where he passed away in May of the following year.

Parents

His father was R.L. Haag, a nurseryman living in Jeffersontown, KY, in 1927. His father was Vice-President of the Kentucky Nurseryman's Association in that year.

Spouse

Haag married four times.

Richard Haag married Cheryl Jean Trivison (born c. 1945) on 09/12/1986.

Biographical Notes

As a youth, Richard Haag was a prodigy who could name many varieties of trees and shrubs and perform plant grafts at 4 years of age; a nurseryman, William A. Natorp, said of little Richard at this time: "The boy has surprised nurseryman by his uncanny knowledge and skill--his conversation on technical tree matters is like that of a matured nurseryman." (See "Kentucky Boy, 4, Attains Fame as Tree-Grafter," newspaper article in unknown newspaper, collection of Richard Haag)

Haag traveled to Sweden in the summer of 1963 to as a delegate to a conference in Stockholm; while in Sweden, Haag was deeply impressed with the Woodland Cemetery by Erik Gunnar Asplund (1885-1940).