In Italy - by Laurie Olin & Pablo Mandel (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Artists and designers have recorded places, people, and life in drawings and sketchbooks for centuries.

Over the past fifty years, Laurie Olin, one of America's most distinguished landscape architects, 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 interest 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 Originally made in the personal pleasure of merely being there as well as self-education, this selection from many sketchbooks and drawings is accompanied with introductory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.

Review Quotes

Designers go to Italy and they draw. Landscape architects draw gardens. Architects draw buildings. But Laurie's drawings offer his warm and generous hand and invite you into his mind. He sees omnivorously - buildings, details, people, flowers, food - and that seeing produces thoughts and wonderment. How lucky we are that he has invited us in." -- Billie Tsien AIA, Architect and a founding partner with Tod Williams of the New York City-based studio Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects Partners

In Italy: sketches and drawings by Laurie Olin offers the trip of a lifetime: a front row seat looking over the shoulder of this great master of line, light, landscape, location, learning how to look at and see it all! Laurie Olin invites us to join him on his life's journey--a passionate love affair really--from the head to toe of Italy! He takes us to the obvious spots like the Grand Canal and the Roman Forum but with many charming detours for the more personal from John Keats's death bed to a puppet show with a snack of Zucchini Flowers along the way! Pablo Mandel has edited and presented it all in a vividly accessible way. No need for passport or plane ticket, just find the nearest comfortable armchair!
I first saw some of these sketchbooks a decade or so ago in our studio at the American Academy in Rome (the very same Laurie has called home over the years, and from where many of these explorations set forth). We were surrounded by that year's crop of budding architects from Yale spending a month to learn about the layers of the eternal city through drawing. We had asked if we could take a peak inside a few of his books that he happened to be carrying. We were dazzled and humbled by Laurie's powers of observation, enhanced with his skill in conveying it through a richly layered repertoire of line, shading, watercolor, all deftly composed on each page! It was all presented with the most succinct, personal and vivid narrative for why it all mattered and begged to be put down on paper! We were all deeply inspired with our brief encounter with this marvel and left with the hope we would have more time to immerse ourselves in these treasures of vision someday! Now, with this lavish and beautiful book, we have that chance!
Just as each page of the sketchbooks is a masterpiece of composition, combining perspective or bird's eye views, with plans and details as well as a rich range of media and expression, the overall "book" in which these many books are nested is a triumph of design and layout in the way it lets us have an overview of the work and at the same time zoom in for a particularly interesting detail. Captions throughout orient us to what we are seeing, and Laurie introduces us to each phase of the journey with his unique personal and highly original observations of what's important! We are able to pause during the journey to take in important "interludes" or detours into food, fountains, trees, and the Gods--what would Italy be without that quartet? What this is about is the importance of looking. It may seem a quaint and lost art in our age of insta-gratification and influencers, more of a throwback to the days of the "grand tour" when the privileged few traveled to Italy on a steamship with their sketching artist in tow. For Laurie, drawing is about focusing one's glance to a gaze leading to and honing into a deep immersion that can only occur through this commitment to stop and look. For the designer and shaper of place of the stature and success that Laurie's lifetime of work has achieved, it is an essential tool, and it is thanks to those who came before and will follow that we still have places around us worth looking at in this way!
The book is also an inspiration and example to follow suit. While few of us can lay claim to the kind of skill set Laurie possesses, we can all benefit from the act drawing to see. As one who has had the good fortune to share work, travels, and many a good meal with Laurie and Victoria, I have observed the facility and spontaneity he applies to his work. "Oh, don't worry about me, I'll catch up", as he said recently in the ancient theater in Taormina, while the rest of us rushed on to lunch. Catch up he did, with far more to show for it than the rest of us, who merely lost our breath rushing!" -- Stephen Harby, Architect, Critic (former) Yale School of Architecture, Fellow, American Academy in Rome