Robert Royston, a revered landscape architect who developed some of UC Berkeley's most renowned sites, passed away Friday at his Mill Valley home. He was 90.

As one of the founding members of California modernism in landscape architecture, Royston's career spanned six decades. His influence on the field is seen not only on the UC Berkeley campus, but across the United States, South America and Asia. He also shared a lifelong passion for dancing and hunting, and was known to take a morning swim every day until the year before his passing.

In 1947, Royston joined UC Berkeley as an assistant professor in the landscape design division, the same program from which he graduated in 1940. At the time, the division was part of the campus's school of agriculture.

He resigned from his position in 1951 after he refused to sign a loyalty oath during the height of McCarthyism.

"(He was) a man of principle," said Barbara Lundburg, a colleague of Royston's at his landscape design firm, Royston, Hanamoto Alley & Abey.

Royston would return to UC Berkeley in later years, working on projects at Memorial Glade, renovating Upper Sproul Plaza and helping to transform what in the 1980s was a vacant driveway into North Gate.

"His simple lines and forms emphasized simple geometrical forms ... that got people to walk through the outdoors," said Louise Mozingo, associate professor of landscape architecture at UC Berkeley.

After leaving UC Berkeley, he continued to teach at Stanford University, University of Virginia and 22 other campuses.

In 1956, Royston founded the landscape architecture firm with two of his former UC Berkeley students. He would stay with the firm for the next 40 years, during which time the firm would receive more than 70 industry awards.

Lundburg said Royston showed great enthusiasm for his work. Even after retiring in 1996, he continued to advise the firm until his last days.

"(He was) an exuberant man who appreciated life as each day went by," she said.

In a book on Royston's career, "Modern Public Gardens: Robert Royston and the Suburban Park," authors J.C. Miller and Reuben Rainey, a landscape architecture professor at University of Virginia, recorded his unique sense of the interaction between different facets of landscape design.

"Just like in dance ... it's all there in terms of line, form, structure, texture, sound ..., your eye will follow it," Royston was quoted as saying in the book.

Rainey said Royston, a peer of his, was an extremely influential figure in his field, with his impact still felt on modern-day architecture.

"It's a great loss ... Royston had a tremendous range of practice and a tremendous sensitivity to the human needs of who he was designing for," Rainey said.

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