Achva Benzinberg Stein is a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects and a Distinguished Alumna of the University of California College of Environmental Design. She has been a practicing professional who has taught and worked in the US, Israel, Europe, India and China. Her projects with neighborhood groups, non-profit organizations, public housing authorities and government agencies have focused on meeting social needs while seeking to heal the damage caused by poorly-managed urban development.

Professor Stein has been honored with the Community Service Award by the American Society of Landscape Architects in recognition of her lifelong commitment to public design and her contribution as the Director of the City College Architectural Center, a community assistance program that prepared designs and master plans for low-income communities in the greater New York City region. Among the numerous awards she has received are: the Outstanding Teaching Award from the City College of New York; the Award of Excellence from the American Institute of Architects California Chapter for her educational contributions to the profession; a Certificate of Commendation for Outstanding Service to the Community from the City of Los Angeles; the Collaborative Practice Award from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture; the Award of Distinction from the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture; and the University of Southern California Associates Award for Excellence in Teaching. Professor Stein has also been the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship two times, once to India in 1979 and again in 2001 to Germany.

Prior to becoming professor emerita, Achva Benzinberg Stein was the founding Director of the Graduate Program in Landscape Architecture at the Spitzer School of Architecture at the City College of New York, where she was a member of the faculty in both Landscape Architecture and Urban Design. She has been teaching in the College of Environmental Design at the University of California at Berkeley since 2015.

Her current practice under the name Benzinberg Stein and Associates is located in Berkeley, where she and her husband, the urban planner David Stein, collaborate on projects in Urban, Regional and Landscape Planning and Design in Central and South America, and in India.

Among her more noted publications are: the book Morocco: Courtyards and Gardens, published by Monacelli Press; the article “On Sacred Trees and Historical Sites” published by the World Bank in Historic Cities and Sacred Sites/Cultural Roots for Urban Futures; and “Winter Dream” in The Next Jerusalem, edited by Michael Sorkin and published by Monacelli Press.

Professor Stein is the designer of the permanent installation of the Moroccan Courtyard in the new galleries for the Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia and South Asia at the Metropolitan Museum of New York. Among her other important works is the installation “Windows of Opportunities,” which was part of the exhibition “Nature Constructed/Nature Revealed” in the National Building Museum in Washington, DC, and which then travelled nationwide. The piece focused on the possibilities embodied in marginal lands in urban areas. Her installation “Subjects and Objects” was shown at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, while her design for “Uhuru Garden” was part of the show “Urban Revisions,” prepared by the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, which later toured both the US and Canada.