• Friends of Fairsted Programs

FALL 2023 LECTURE

Tuesday, November 28, 2023

The Olmsted in All of Us

Charles A. Birnbaum, FASLA, FAAR
President & CEO of The Cultural Landscape Foundation

Reception: 6:00 pm. Program: 7:00–8:30pm.
Hawes Hall, 43 Hawes Street, Brookline, MA 02446
Friends of Fairsted Lectures are free and open to the public.

Good Neighbors NPS program

In 2022 we celebrated the bicentennial of Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr.’s birth, and generally speaking, his impact on the profession of Landscape Architecture is still only superficially understood. This presentation draws on forty years of professional practice, incorporating big ideas and anecdotes, and aims to lift the veil on those in Olmsted’s practice and his successor firms from 1857-1979 who carried his legacy forward. The presentation addresses how the Olmsted practice served as the definer of the profession of Landscape Architecture and how the firm came to define what a corporate practice should look like and how it should function. The presentation closes with a reflection on how we can steward Olmsted’s ideas and built works today — from deeper and broader cultural contexts to supporting and collaborating with individuals and organizations who are working in their communities to engage with Olmsted and his legacy. Photo: National Park Service.

Charles A. Birnbaum Charles A. Birnbaum, FASLA, FAAR, is President & CEO of The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF). Prior to creating TCLF, he spent fifteen years as Coordinator, National Park Service Historic Landscape Initiative, and a decade in private practice in New York City. Birnbaum has authored and edited numerous publications including Modern Landscapes: Transition and Transformation, Shaping the American Landscape, Design with Culture, Preserving Modern Landscape Architecture, and Experiencing Olmsted. He was a Loeb Fellow at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, and a Rome Prize recipient. He was awarded ASLA’s LaGasse Medal in 2008, President’s Medal in 2009, and the ASLA Medal in 2018 and has held teaching positions at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, and Ohio State University. Photo: TCLF.

The Friends of Fairsted are grateful to Boston University for their generosity in hosting our lectures and to the staff of the National Park Service, Frederick Law Olmsted NHS for their passionate stewardship of Fairsted without which these programs would not be possible.

PLEASE DONATE

Make a contribution to support the Friends of Fairsted Lecture Series.

For additional information about this lecture and other Friends of Fairsted events and programs.

PAST LECTURES
2022–2023
February 9, 2023:
Before Central Park: A Conversation on Seneca Village

Sara Cedar Miller and Carla L. Peterson

2021–2022
March 2022:
Olmsted and Yosemite: Civil War, Abolition, and the National Park Idea

Rolf Diamant and Ethan Carr

Dec 2021:
Beauty, Efficiency, and Economy: A Life of Frederick Law Olmsted Jr.

Elizabeth Hope Cushing

2020–2021
April 2021:
Ecologies of Memory

Sara Zewde

December 2020:
The Olmsted Brothers’ Planning in California: A Prescient Approach to Ecological Design

Christine E. O’Hara

2019–2020
November 2019:
Climate Change and Urban Landscapes: Extending Olmsted’s Legacy

Chris Reed

2018–2019
December 2018:
Saving Central Park: A History and A Memoir

Elizabeth Barlow Rogers

2017-2018
April 2018:
What Is a Park For? Olmsted, Obama, and the Meanings of Urban Landscape

Carlo Rotella
December 2017:
Beyond Drawings: The Olmsted Archives as Muse and Vision

Lucinda Brockway

2016–2017
March 2017:
Lewis Mumford’s Green Urbanism

Aaron Sachs
December 2016:
From the Granite Garden to West Philadelphia (with a nod to the Fens): Restoring Nature & Communities

Anne Whiston Spirn

2015–2016
April 2016:
Parks: Cornerstone of Civic Revitalization

Rolf Diamant
December 2015:
The “Fairsted School”: An Enduring Legacy

Ethan Carr

2014–2015
March 2015:
Visible|Invisible

Gary Hilderbrand

December 2014:
Dwelling in Landscape

Daniel Bluestone