Mexican Landscape Architect Mario Schjetnan and Grupo de Diseño Urbano Win 2025 Oberlander Prize
Members of Grupo de Diseño Urbano pictured in 2025. From left to right: Marco A. González, senior associate; Ana Schjetnan, partner; Mario Schjetnan. founding partner and director; Manuel Peniche, senior associate.
The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF) has named Mexico’s Mario Schjetnan as winner of the 2025 Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize. Schjetnan, a champion of the basic human right to public space, shares the honor with Mexico City–based Grupo de Diseño Urbano (GDU), an interdisciplinary landscape architecture, urbanism, and architecture firm that he co-founded in 1977 with architect José Luis Pérez. Together, Schjetnan and GDU are the third Oberlander Prize laureates, following Julie Bargmann of Charlottesville, Virginia–based D.I.R.T. studio (2021) and Kongjian Yu (2023), the late founder of Chinese firm Turenscape.
2025 Oberlander Prize laureate Mario Schjetnan. Photo by Barrett Doherty, courtesy The Cultural Landscape Foundation
Major works by GDU include Xochimilco Ecological Park, part of a larger UNESCO World Heritage Site in the far south of Mexico City; the ambitious rehabilitation of Bosque de Chapultepec, a sprawling park and forest that serve as the “green lungs” of Mexico City; and La Mexicana Park, a heralded contemporary green space at the site of a former quarry in Mexico City’s Sante Fe district. While the firm works extensively in Mexico and Latin America, it has also completed projects in the United States, China, and the Middle East. Stateside projects include San Pedro Creek Culture Park in San Antonio, Texas, and Oakland, California’s waterfront Union Point Park, which was completed in 2005 as its first project in the U.S.
Recognizing practitioners who have produced a “significant body of built work that exemplifies the art of landscape architecture,” the biennial Oberlander Prize was named after pioneering Canadian landscape architect Cornelia Hahn Oberlander and comes with a $100,000 award as well as two years of public engagement activities organized by TCLF that will commence next year. A seven-person jury chose the latest laureates from a pool of more than 300 international nominations. In its citation, the jury heralded GDU as being a “strong voice for social engagement and environmental justice in tandem with the art of landscape architecture.”
La Mexicano Park, Mexico City. Photo by Francisco Gomez Sosa courtesy Grupo de Diseno Urbano and The Cultural Landscape Foundation
Xochimilco Ecological Park, Mexico City. Photo by Francisco Gomez Sosa, courtesy Grupo de Diseno Urbano and The Cultural Landscape Foundation
Receiving an undergraduate degree in architecture from the National Autonomous University of Mexico in 1968 and a Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley in 1970, Schjetnan is described by TCLF as being “part of a generation of landscape architects, architects, and urbanists who became aware of the environmental impact of urban development and its consequences on life, the planet, and its inhabitants.” This focus on environmental studies—and the power of public-private partnerships for major civic projects, a rarity in Mexico at the time—underpinned his 1984 Loeb Fellowship at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Schjetnan has cited Luis Barragán, Roberto Burle Marx, and Lawrence Halprin, whose inspired him to study at Berkeley, as major influences.
Chapultepec Forest and Park, Mexico City. Photo by Francisco Gomez Sosa, courtesy Grupo de Diseno Urbano and The Cultural Landscape Foundation
San Pedro Creek Cultural Park, San Antonio. Photo by Francisco Gomez Sosa, courtesy Grupo de Diseno Urbano and The Cultural Landscape Foundation
In addition to his award-winning work at GDU, Schjetnan is a prolific educator and has held professorships and teaching posts at several Mexican universities as well as at Harvard, the University of Virginia, the University of Texas, Austin, and his alma mater U.C. Berkeley, among others. Through his myriad academic appointments and practice with GDU, Schjetnan has “created a diverse and innovative body of projects, and advanced theories and initiated actions for creating a more just public realm,” remarked TCLF president and CEO Charles Birnbaum in a statement. Schjetnan is a member of the Academy of Arts of Mexico; emeritus member of the National Academy of Architecture; Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects; and founding member of the Mexican Society of Landscape Architects.
Bicentennial Park Nature Garden, Mexico City. Photo by Sergio Medellín, courtesy Grupo de Diseno Urbano and The Cultural Landscape Foundation
Much more on Schjetnan and GDU can be found on the Oberlander Prize website including an extensive biography and several videos, including ones that focus on the three major projects in Mexico mentioned above.
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