Renowned landscape architect Laurie Olin joins Stuckeman School as virtual guest

UNIVERSTY PARK, Pa. — Laurie Olin, distinguished teacher, author and one of the most renowned landscape architects practicing today, will join the Stuckeman School at 6 p.m. on Feb. 24 as the 2021 recipient of the Department of Landscape Architecture’s John R. Bracken Fellowship.

The lecture, titled “Landscape Design and the Open Society" is part of the school’s Spring Virtual Lecture Series, which is being offered in partnership with WPSU.

Olin is the founding partner of the landscape architecture and urban design firm OLIN. From vision to realization, he has guided many of the practice’s signature projects, from the Washington Monument Grounds in Washington, D.C. to Bryant Park in New York City and the Getty Center in Los Angeles. His recent projects include the award-winning Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia and Apple Park in Cupertino, California.

As a firm, OLIN 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.

Olin is a fellow of the Guggenheim, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA). He won the Rome Prize in Landscape Architecture in 1972 and was the recipient of the 2012 National Medal of Arts, the Vincent Scully Prize, from the National Building Museum.

As a writer, Olin has written widely on the history and theory of architecture and landscape, receiving the ASLA Bradford Williams medal for best writing on landscape architecture.

Olin studied civil engineering at the University of Alaska and architecture at the University of Washington. He is currently emeritus professor of landscape architecture at the University of Pennsylvania and former chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture at Harvard University.

The lecture is free and open to the public; preregistration is required via bit.ly/olin-lecture.