The gardens and estate of La Foce constitute one of the most important and best kept early twentieth-century gardens in Italy. Amid 3,500 acres of farmland in the countryside near Pienza, with sweeping views of the Tuscan landscape, La Foce was the childhood dream garden of the late writer Marchesa Iris Origo. Passionate about the order and symmetry of Florentine gardens, Origo and her husband, Antonio, purchased the dilapidated villa in 1924, soliciting the help of English architect and family friend Cecil Pinsent to reawaken the natural magic of the property. Pinsent designed the structure of simple, elegant, box-edged beds and green enclosures that give shape to the Origos' shrubs, perennials, and vines, and created a garden of soaring cypress walks, native cyclamen, lawns, and wildflower meadows. It is, by all accounts, a remarkable achievement.
Today the garden is a place of unusual and striking beauty, a green oasis in the barren Siena countryside. Situated in the Val d'Orcia, a wide valley in southeastern Tuscany that seems to exist on a larger, wilder scale than the rest of the Tuscan landscape, it is run by Benedetta and Donata Origo, and is open to the public one day a week.
La Foce: A Garden and Landscape in Tuscany is a contemplative, multifaceted study of the house, gardens, and estate of La Foce. It includes a historical essay and memoir by the daughter of La Foce's creators, Antonio and Iris Origo, along with photographs, sketches, and a critical analysis of the gardens. The volume not only focuses on the beauty of the gardens themselves and their indisputable merit as fascinating works of landscape architecture but also sees them within the context of both the larger Tuscan topography and the wider landscape of geography and history. The book will be a delight to armchair travelers, trade and landscape architects, gardeners, and those interested in Tuscan culture.

La Foce: A Garden and Landscape in Tuscany (Penn Studies in Landscape Architecture)

Crafts, Hobbies & Home

Benedetta Origo

Laurie Olin

John Dixon Hunt

Morna Livingston

Gardening & Landscape Design

University of Pennsylvania Press

On October 3, 2003, the Liberty Cell Center, the new home of the Liberty Bell, was opened to the public. The building, designed by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, is one of the highlights of Philadelphia's reconfigured Independence Mall. This book offers a close look at the building. It presents an extensive set of reproductions and photographs, including records of the design and building process, that thoroughly document the building and its surroundings. The book also features essays that flesh out the building's rich context and its historical background. They include insiders' accounts of the design process as well as critical maps of the constellation of forces that come into play in shaping a building of this significance.

Bohlin Cywinski Jackson: Liberty Bell Center

History

Oscar Riera Ojeda

Rodolphe El-Khoury

Bernard Cywinski

Richard Sommer

Americas

ORO Editions

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Books by Laurie Olin