Laurie Olin

Practice Professor Emeritus Laurie Olin returns to Weitzman for the Philadelphia launch of his latest book, In Italy: Sketches & Drawings (ORO Editions, 2024). 

The acclaimed landscape architect talks about the role of drawing in his practice and the special place that Italy occupies in his travels. The presentation will be followed by a light reception. In Italy will be available for purchase at the event.

About the Book

Artists and designers have recorded places, people, and life in drawings and sketchbooks for centuries. Over the past fifty years, Laurie Olin has recorded aspects of life and the environment in Italy: its cities and countryside, streets and cafes, ancient ruins, art, architecture, people, villas, and gardens—civic and domestic, humble to grand, things of interested to his designer’s eye—taking the time to see carefully. Rome in its seasons, agriculture in Umbria and Tuscany, trees, food, and fountains, all are noted over the years in watercolor or pen and ink. Originally made in the personal pleasure of merely being there as well as self-education, this selection from many sketchbooks and drawings is accompanied with introductory notes and remarks for different regions including Rome, Turin, Venice, Tuscany, Umbria, Lazio, Campania, and Sicily.
 
About the Speaker

Laurie Olin is a distinguished teacher, author, and one of the most renowned landscape architects practicing today. As founding partner of OLIN, he has guided many of the firm’s signature projects, which span the history of the studio from the Washington Monument Grounds in Washington, DC to Bryant Park in New York City. Olin studied civil engineering at the University of Alaska and pursued architecture at the University of Washington, where Richard Haag encouraged him to focus on landscape. He has taught at Penn for 40 years, and is former chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture at Harvard University. Olin is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects, and recipient of the 1998 Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is the recipient of the 2012 National Medal of Arts, the highest lifetime achievement award for artists and designers bestowed by the National Endowment for the Arts and the President of the United States. He also holds the 2011 American Society of Landscape Architects Medal, the society’s highest award for a landscape architect. 
 

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