USC to Honor Wemple for Landscaping : School’s Alumnus Famed for Design of Getty Museum

Los Angeles landscape architect and teacher Emmet L. Wemple, perhaps best known for his design of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu, will be honored Wednesday with the 1988 Distinguished Alumnus Award by the Architectural Guild of the USC School of Architecture.

The award will be presented at the 29th annual guild dinner at the Town and Gown on the USC campus. Past recipients of the award are Jon Jerde, Rafael Soriano and Frank Gehry.

Tokyo Embassy Work

Wemple has been a professor of architecture and a faculty member at USC since 1951 and president of Emmet L. Wemple and Associates, Los Angeles, since 1968. He is a practicing landscape architect--licensed in California, Colorado, Texas and Louisiana--and is a fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architecture.

The award honors Wemple’s “excellence in architectural education and innovative leadership in professional practice.”

In addition to the Getty Museum, Wemple’s firm was the landscape architect of the American Embassy in Tokyo, children’s parks in Central America, a retirement center in Montecito, Calif., the Koll Center Newport Industrial Park, the Naval Regional Center in San Diego and the Angelus Plaza Elderly Housing development in downtown Los Angeles.

New Getty Museum

The firm is currently the landscape architect for the Otis Parsons campus and the new Getty Museum in Brentwood.

A San Franciso native, Wemple has spent most of his life in the Southland. He served in the Marines in World War II, returning to USC to complete his degree.

He is a member of the board of directors of the Los Angeles Conservancy and the Urban Design Advisory Coalition and is a board member and past president of the Architectural Guild. He is a past president of the Gamble House and, with his wife, Meg, is a member of the Founders of the Music Center.