Laurie Olin

Laurie Olin (born 1938, Marshfield, Wisconsin) is an American landscape architect. He has worked on landscape design projects at diverse scales, from private residential gardens to public parks and corporate/museum campus plans.

Early life Olin grew up in Alaska, and earned his degree in Architecture from the University of Washington in Seattle, where he was mentored under Richard Haag.

Career After graduating he worked for offices in Seattle, New York City, and London. In 1976 he became a professor for the University of Pennsylvania, where he offered courses on the design of environments. In 1986 he became head chair of the landscape architecture program at Harvard University. After serving as chair at Harvard, Olin returned to University of Pennsylvania where he continues to be Practice Professor of Landscape Architecture.

Founding OLIN Olin is the founding partner of the landscape architecture and urban design firm OLIN, formerly Olin Partnership. The firm received the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award for Landscape Design in 2008, and in 2010 was on the winning team in the competition to design the new United States Embassy in London with architects KieranTimberlake.

Writing Olin has written widely on the history and theory of architecture and landscape, receiving the Bradford Williams medal for best writing on Landscape Architecture. Olin co-authored La Foce: A Garden and Landscape in Tuscany, which includes a historical essay, along with photographs, sketches, and a critical analysis of the early 20th-century garden in Italy. Across the Open Field (2000), is both a memoir and series of essays on the evolution of the English landscape. He is also the author of Transforming the Commonplace (1996) and Vizcaya: An American Villa and Its Makers (2006, with Witold Rybczynski), on James Deering's mansion in Coconut Grove, Florida.

Awards and honors Olin is a Guggenheim Fellow, an American Academy of Rome Fellow, a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA), an honorary member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA), a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the 1999 Wyck-Strickland Award recipient. Olin won the Rome Prize in Landscape Architecture in 1972, was the recipient of the 1998 Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and was recently inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Olin was a speaker in the Spotlight on Design Lecture Series at the National Building Museum in 2003. In 1994 he was elected into the National Academy of Design. In 2012 he was presented with the prestigious National Medal of Arts by President Obama. Awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts, it is the highest honor given to artists by the US Government.

Notable projects

Europe Bishopsgate, London, England Brancusi Ensemble, Târgu Jiu, Romania Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Berlin, Germany (with architect Peter Eisenman) Westferry Circus, London, England

United States Apple Park, Cupertino, California Director Park, Portland, Oregon 1 Memorial Drive, campus of the headquarters of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City ARCO corporate headquarters, La Palma, California Battery Park City, Manhattan, New York Bryant Park, Manhattan, New York Columbus Circle, Manhattan, New York Getty Center, Brentwood, Los Angeles, California Hudson Yards Redevelopment Project, Manhattan, New York Mill River Park & Greenway, Stamford, Connecticut Pacific Park, open space around development, Brooklyn, New York Pershing Square, Los Angeles, California Robert F. Wagner Park, New York University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (Campus Development Plan) Washington Monument, Washington, DC Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC LDS Conference Center roof ambient, part of The Gardens at Temple Square, Salt Lake City, Utah

Awards ASLA Merit Award, ARCO Research Center, 1984 Progressive Architecture Magazine Design Award, Battery Park City, 1985 Urban Landscape Institute Award for Excellence for Public Projects, Bryant Park, 1996 ASLA Landmark Award, Battery Park City, 2003 ASLA Design Honor Award, the J. Paul Getty Center, 2003 ASLA Award of Excellence, The Heart of the Park at Hermann Park, 2005 Mid-Atlantic Construction Magazine Park/Landscape Award of Merit, the Washington Monument, 2005 AIA Honor Award for Regional and Urban Design, the University of British Columbia, 2006 ASLA Landscape Architecture Firm Award (awarded to OLIN firm), 2006 ASLA General Design Award of Honor, Columbus Circle, 2006 Royal Architectural Institute of Canada Urban Design Award, the University of British Columbia, 2006 ASLA General Design Award Of Honor, the Washington Monument, 2008 Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award (awarded to OLIN firm), 2008 Urban Land Institute Award of Excellence, Comcast Building (awarded to OLIN firm), 2009 Building Institute's Bybee Prize, 2010 ASLA Landmark Award, Bryant Park (awarded to OLIN firm), 2010 ASLA Medal, 2011 National Medal of Arts, 2012 Thomas Jefferson Medal in Architecture, 2013 Vincent Scully Prize, 2017

Publications France Sketchbooks, 2020. Edited by Laurie Olin and Pablo Mandel Be Seated, 2018. OLIN: Placemaking, 2008. Vizcaya: An American Villa and its Members, with Witold Rybczynski, 2007. La Foce: A Garden and Landscape in Tuscany, with Benedetta Origo et al., 2001. Across the Open Field: Essays Drawn from English Landscapes, 2000. Transforming the Common Place: Selections from Laurie Olin's Sketchbook, 1996. Breath on the Mirror: Seattle's Skid Road Community, 1973.