Landscape Architect: Making Nature Look a Bit Better
When Laurie Olin completes a landscape, people often ask him, "Wasn't it always like this?" The answer is no. "You go to a lot of trouble to make it seem so simple," says Olin, who designed Bryant Park, Battery Park, and Columbus Circle in New York. "It took an awful lot of artifice to make it feel this good." Before Olin began redesigning the Washington Monument grounds in 2001, he says, "It was on an ugly hill with a terrible path." Now, "when you go up it, there's this real sense of uplift"–a feat that required moving thousands of tons of earth and building great sweeping walls.
Some projects need to gestate awhile. Like years. When Olin reshapes the natural environment, he thinks about how the landscape will look to future generations. "You go to a lot of trouble to plant these trees, and they look like wimps for a while," he says. "It's not a good field for people who need immediate gratification in their work. But if you get it right, they look great later."
Landscape architecture has all the dilemmas of many service professions. "You're trying to please people; you have budgets and schedules and long hours," Olin says. But it has uncommon rewards: "Nothing is more exciting than going to a site that is under construction, and then going back to see people use it."
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