Charles A. Birnbaum

Charles A. Birnbaum, FASLA, FAAR, is an advocate for the preservation and study of American landscapes. Birnbaum is the president, CEO, and founder of The Cultural Landscape Foundation, an organization established to document cultural landscapes and promote their stewardship. He is recognized for efforts to identify and protect significant landscapes at risk of erasure, neglect, or alteration.

Before founding The Cultural Landscape Foundation, Birnbaum developed a career in both the public and private sectors. He served as coordinator of the National Park Service Historic Landscape Initiative and spent a decade in private practice in New York City, focusing on landscape preservation and urban design. In these roles, Birnbaum contributed to the development and implementation of the Secretary of the Interior's Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties and Guidelines for the Treatment of Cultural Landscapes. The American Society of Landscape Architects awarded the Historic Landscape Initiative the President's Award of Excellence and inducted Birnbaum as a Fellow of the Society. He was also a Loeb Fellow at Harvard Graduate School of Design, where he founded The Cultural Landscape Foundation.

Through Birnbaum's leadership, The Cultural Landscape Foundation has become a platform for landscape education and advocacy. Notable projects include the web-based initiative "What's Out There," a searchable database of the nation's designed landscape heritage, and the creation of the first International Prize in Landscape Architecture named for Cornelia Hahn Oberlander. Birnbaum played a role in preserving the Russell Page garden at the Frick Museum by producing documentation that identified the space as a permanent garden. He has also highlighted the contributions of overlooked landscape designers and stewards, including Ruth Shellhorn and Anne Spencer. The Cultural Landscape Foundation received the Olmsted Medal for its work in education and advocacy.

Birnbaum is an author and editor whose publications have influenced the field of landscape architecture. His works include "Experiencing Olmsted: The Enduring Legacy of Frederick Law Olmsted's North American Landscapes," "Shaping the Postwar Landscape," the "Modern Landscapes: Transition and Transformation" series, "Design with Culture: Claiming America's Landscape Heritage," "Preserving Modern Landscape Architecture," "Making Post-War Landscapes Visible," "Pioneers of American Landscape Design," and "The Guidelines for the Treatment of Cultural Landscapes." Birnbaum has produced oral history modules and profiles of modern landscape architects such as James van Sweden, Cornelia Hahn Oberlander, Lawrence Halprin, and Paul Friedberg.

Birnbaum's work in landscape architecture and historic preservation has been recognized with several honors, including the Rome Prize in Historic Preservation and Conservation, the Alfred B. LaGasse Medal, the President's Medal, the ASLA Medal, the Landezine International Landscape Honour Award, and the Garden Club of America's Historic Preservation Medal. Birnbaum serves as a lecturer in landscape architecture at Harvard University Graduate School of Design and has been a visiting critic and professor at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture.