OLIN

OLIN creates distinguished landscapes and urban designs worldwide. Our work is predicated upon social engagement, craft, detail, materiality and timelessness. Our appreciation of the urban environment is paramount. We love cities. We celebrate their complexities, contradictions and constraints. We believe in their continued evolution and enjoy collaboratively shaping the way they look and function.

Craft is seminal to our practice. Landscapes are intentioned to be aesthetically pleasing and durable. We value multi-functional, flexible and environmentally sensitive design solutions. Through craft, our landscapes have potential to be catalysts for human interaction, recreation and community. We approach each project individually, basing design decisions upon the underlying expressive power of a particular site in conjunction with specific programmatic requirements. In all of our work, we carefully assess the distinguishing spatial characteristics of a site, its connections to surrounding areas, local traditions and history, the natural environment and social and cultural conditions. We synthesize and integrate our findings in new site elements and systems that we manipulate, amplify and layer to create expressive designs.

OLIN’s celebrated projects include Bryant Park, Canary Wharf, Battery Park City, the J. Paul Getty Center and the Barnes Foundation. OLIN’s current work includes prominent work such as Philadelphia’s Dilworth Plaza, the waterfront of Mill River in Stamford, Connecticut, and the Washington Monument Grounds at Sylvan Theater on the National Mall. We work on large-scale master planning commissions to mid-sized institutional work to small urban interventions. Regardless of scale or typology, our multi-disciplinary design staff–of which there are 85 of us–create environmentally advanced, technical projects, promoting greater social engagement and ecology for every project.

OLIN has offices in both Philadelphia and Los Angeles and works throughout North America, Europe and Asia. Notably, most of our 12 partners teach at leading U.S. design institutions ensuring a continuous infusion of theory into a vastly successful and enduring landscape and urban design practice.