Harry Howard (landscape architect)
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Harry Howard (1930-2000) was an Australian landscape architect, and one of the first members of the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects (AILA).
Howard had no formal training in landscape architecture, graduating from the University of Sydney with a degree in architecture. A devotee of the modernist style of architecture, Howard counted Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier among his influences, and later became friends with Sydney architect of the modernist style, Harry Seidler.
Howard came to prominence in the 1970s, around the establishment of the first landscape architecture program in Australia at the University of New South Wales, designing the landscape around the High Court and National Gallery of Australia in Canberra. He was the first landscape architect to be employed by local government, working with Lane Cove Council in the 1970s and initiating the idea of creating 'bushland reserves' in Sydney. He is most well known for his use of indigenous plant species and informal planting arrangements, creating a feeling of the bush without recreating it.
Along with Bruce Rickard and Bruce MacKenzie, contemporary Australian landscape architects receiving training in the United States, Howard instigated the Sydney School of Landscape Architecture at 7 Berry Street, North Sydney. Later in his career, Howard taught in the school of architecture at the University of New South Wales.
