The death of Lawrence Halprin at age 93 this week is another reminder that the generation of pioneering modernist landscape architects is passing into history.

Next week, The Cultural Landscape Foundation and Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy will honor another of those trailblazers, Pittsburgh's own John O. Simonds, at a day-long symposium Nov. 6 at The Andy Warhol Museum.

Simonds, who died in 2005, worked around the country and is best known here for two important works: Mellon Square, Downtown, and the 1966 redesign of Allegheny Commons Park, most notably Lake Elizabeth, on the North Side. Also an urban planner, he designed four new towns, including Miami Lakes and Pelican Bay in Florida, and was the planner of record for more than 80 planned communities.

The symposium will feature design and planning professionals who worked with Simonds and academics who will interpret his career, including his influence on Pittsburgh and the field of landscape architecture and his pioneering environmental planning efforts.

For Simonds as a community planner, "it's environmentalism first and less about strong form-giving," said Cultural Landscape Foundation president Charles Birnbaum.

In addition to Birnbaum, speakers include Louis D. Astorino, Martin Aurand, Safei-Eldin Hamed, Edward K. Muller, Patricia O'Donnell, Robert Pease, Marion Pressley, Susan Rademacher, Jack R. Scholl, Barry W. Starke and Bob Vukich.

Birnbaum hopes the symposium will provide greater context for Simonds' work, which would help support national historic status for Mellon Square.

The event is the fourth of five symposia recognizing landscape architects in cities around the country, including New York; Nashville, Tenn.; San Francisco/Berkeley; and Chicago.

It also marks the publication of "Shaping the American Landscape: New Profiles From the Pioneers of American Landscape Design Project." It's the second volume in the series and chronicles the work of 149 landscape architects.

"It's a broader time span," Birnbaum said. To be included, "you don't have to be dead [as in the first volume], but you do have to be able to bracket your career."

Birnbaum, who thinks Americans suffer from cultural amnesia when it comes to landscapes, established the foundation in 1997 as a Loeb Fellow at Harvard.

"We're looking to create a broader discourse between designers and preservationists and place scenery, culture and nature on equal footings," he said. "So we teach people how to see [a designed landscape], enjoy it and guide it into the future."

The foundation's Web site, tclf.org, is expanding this week to include a new feature called What's Out There, allowing users to search for landscapes by designer, type or geographic location and also enter their own data.

The symposium, titled "The Hunter and the Philosopher: John O. Simonds, Pioneer Landscape Architect," will be held from 9 a.m. to 4:45 p.m.; the fee is $125, $100 for Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy members and $60 for students. On-site registration is from 8 to 9 a.m.

The symposium's opening reception at The Warhol on the evening of Nov. 5 also is the opening of The Cultural Landscape Foundation's "Marvels of Modernism" exhibit there, with photographs highlighting significant modern designs including Allegheny Commons' Lake Elizabeth.

The parks conservancy will unveil the Mellon Square master plan by Heritage Landscapes, which guides preservation, interpretation, programming and management into the future.

Tickets for the opening reception, which includes a buffet dinner, are $125.

From 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Saturday, landscape architects Marion Pressley and Patricia O'Donnell will lead a walking tour of Lake Elizabeth and Mellon Square. Tickets are $25.

For more information and tickets, visit pittsburghparks.org.

Looking for more from the Post-Gazette? Join PG+, our members-only web site. You'll get exclusive sports content, opinion, financial information, discounts from retailers and restaurants, and more. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.