Ralph Cornell - California’s First Landscape Architect by Brian Tichenor

Ralph Dalton Cornell (1890-1972) was a Pomona student who went on to become the College's most important landscape architect, pioneering the idea of Pomona as a “college in a garden” and serving in this position for more than 40 years after he began in 1919. A graduate of Harvard Graduate School of Design, he was said to have “done more to change the complexion of Southern California than any other person” through his many projects in landscape design, including UCLA, Torrey Pines Park in San Diego, the Los Angeles Music Center, La Brea Tar Pits, Beverly Gardens, Oak Park Cemetery, and multiple years of the National Orange Show in San Bernardino, California.
Brian Tichenor has practiced Architecture and Landscape Architecture in California for more than thirty-five years. He was a designer in Charles Moore’s office, was a partner with Nancy Goslee Power, and a student of Architectural History under David Gephard. He and his wife, Raun Thorp, founded Tichenor & Thorp Architects in 1990, and have completed over four hundred projects around the world. He is a professor at USC, where he has taught for the last twelve years. The work of his firm has been extensively published, including a recent monograph from Vendome Press- ‘Outside In: the Houses and Gardens of Tichenor and Thorp’. Current projects include many houses and gardens, mostly in California, several large bio-medical campuses, and the design of both the buildings and the landscape of the new Los Angeles Times Headquarters and Cultural Center.