Witold Rybczynski

Laurie Olin

Like its palatial contemporaries Biltmore and San Simeon, Vizcaya represents an achievement of the Gilded Age, when country houses and their gardens were a conspicuous measure of personal wealth and power. In Vizcaya, the authors use illustrations, historic photographs, and narrative to document this extraordinary house and landscape.

An American Villa and Its Makers

Vizcaya

For centuries artists and designers have recorded places, people, and life in travel sketchbooks. Over a period of fifty years, Laurie Olin, one of America's most distinguished landscape architects, has recorded aspects of France: its cities and countryside, streets and cafes, ancient ruins, vineyards, and parks--from humble to grand, things that interested his designer's eye--taking the time to see things carefully. Paris in its seasons, agriculture in Provence and Bordeaux, trees, dogs, and fountains, all are noted over the years in watercolor or pen and ink. Originally intended for the pleasure of merely being there as well as self-education, this personal selection from his many sketchbooks is accompanied by transcriptions of notes and observations, along with introductory remarks for the different regions included: Paris, Haute Loire, Provence, Haute Provence, Normandy, Aquitaine, and Entre des Meures.

The Travel Sketchbooks of Artists and Designers

France Sketchbooks

John Dixon Hunt

Morna Livingston

Benedetta Origo

A beautiful homage to the breathtaking Italian gardens retraces the history of these brilliantly tailored grounds at La Foce, Tuscany, while showcasing their most spectacular assets and describing the history of the gardens.

A Garden and Landscape in Tuscany

La Foce

Laurie Olin's interest in public outdoor seating in parks and civic spaces revolves around two poles: the first is a concern for aspects of the ordinary in our settings and actions, the apparatus and effects of the quotidian in our individual lives and experience; the other is the utility of public seating in the conduct and potential of our role as citizens and the establishment of place and community. A not inconsiderable aspect of both is the engendering of pleasure. In a democracy we are expected to fulfill two potentials - those of private citizen and contributing member of a community. When sitting on a bench or chair in a park or plaza we inevitably participate in the life of a particular space, city, and society while simultaneously pursuing our own life with its demands and aspirations. Chairs and benches in their many varieties and situations are the setting (pun intended) for profoundly simple, albeit important, and largely unnoticed aspects of our lives. Humans are gregarious and habitually love to be together, often sitting about for hours at a time. Commonly this is for dining, whether singly or in groups, large or small. We sit in public places, in private ones, indoors and out, often doing nothing except watching the world. Over the course of centuries many devices have been developed for such purposes. Not a comprehensive history or survey, this is an appreciation derived from frequent, often iterative personal observation and constant professional engagement with the topic of seating, sometimes in gardens, but more particularly in public and civic environments. The book consists of a series of essays that begin with the author's personal discovery of public seating. An 'ah hah' moment as a young architect visiting Paris and his early experience as a designer is followed by a brief history of the evolution of public space and seating in the West. This is followed by an account of some of his experiments as a landscape architect, and the theory, craft, and role of seating in a number of prominent civic places his firm and others have designed in the past four decades. Along the way there are reflections on the author's interest in chairs, seating, public space, and aspects of the profession of landscape architecture. Accompanying the essays there are sketches, and watercolors made by Olin over time while travelling or working that weren't originally intended as book illustrations. Some are quick, hasty notes of something observed; others are more careful studies with, on occasion, measurements. Some were made leisurely while enjoying a felicitous moment or place, while others record the author puzzling through a particular design problem. Each in some way exemplifies aspects of the essays helping to articulate or sharpen the author's insights and point of view - those of a designer, not a historian or critic. They offer an alternative presentation of the topics raised, and a dialogue between writing and image - whether one of contrast, or at times, contrast.

Laurie Olin

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