13th Biennial 2025

Thomas Woltz is the owner of Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects. Over the past two decades of practice Thomas and his team have infused narratives of the land into the places where people live, work, and play, engendering stewardship and inspiring connections between people and the natural world.

Woltz was educated at the University of Virginia and holds master’s degrees in landscape architecture and architecture. He also holds an honrary Doctor of Science degree from the State University of New York, Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse. He was recognized with the Land for People Award by the Trust for Public Land in 2019 and as one of the most creative people in business by Fast Company in 2017. Woltz currently serves on the Boards of Directors of the Cultural Landscape Foundation and the University of Virginia School of Architecture Foundation.

At present, Thomas is leading NBW in the design of significant public landscapes across the United States, Canada, and New Zealand, including the John and Alice Coltrane Home in New York, Holden Forest & Arboretum in Cleveland, Cornwall Park in Auckland, and Memorial Park in Houston.

My artworks and installations have been exhibited in Europe, North and South America, Asia and Australia, and have been viewed by hundreds of thousands visitors online. I have been commissioned by organisations including the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Barbican, Artangel, the Oslo Architecture Triennale, the Istanbul Design Biennial, and been honoured by Ars Electronica, the Japan Media Arts Festival, and the Design Museum, London.

My writing on literature, culture and networks has appeared in magazines and newspapers including the Guardian, Frieze, Wired, Domus, the Atlantic, the New Statesman, the Financial Times, and many others, in print and online, and I have written a regular column for the Observer. My formulation of the New Aesthetic research project has spurred debate and creative work across multiple disciplines, and continues to inspire critical and artistic responses.

I published New Dark Age, a book about technology, politics, and society, in 2018, with Verso (UK, US), which has been translated into over a dozen languages. In 2019, I wrote and presented New Ways of Seeing, a four-part series on art and technology for BBC Radio 4. My second book, 'Ways of Being' (Penguin / FSG), about technology, ecology, and more-than-human intelligence, was published in 2022.

I lecture regularly on radio, at conferences, universities, and other events, including SXSW, The Next Web, the Global Art Forum, Re:Publica and TED. I have been a resident at Lighthouse, Brighton, the White Building, London, and SVA and Eyebeam, New York. I have been an Adjunct Professor on the Interactive Telecommunications Programme at New York University, a Lecturer at the Dutch Art Institute, and a convenor of the School of Infinite Rehearsals, Onassis AIR, Athens.

My work received an Honorary Mention at the Prix Ars Electronica 2013 and again in 2023, an Excellence Award at the Japan Media Arts Festival 2014, an Honorary Mention at CERN COLLIDE 2016, and was shortlisted for the Future Generation Art Prize 2014. I won the Design Museum Graphics Design of the Year in 2014.

I hold a Master's Degree in Computer Science and Cognitive Science from University College, London, and wrote my dissertation (2004) on creative applications of Artificial Intelligence.