2025 Philip Hanson Hiss Award Honoring OLIN Lecture

2025 Philip Hanson Hiss Award Honoring OLIN Lecture

Lecture Title: Time & Place: Bad Romances and Creative Realities

Richard Roark, ASLA, AICP, Chief Purpose Officer and Partner, OLIN

Thursday, March 27, 2025

6:00-7:00pm

Marie Selby Botanical Garderns

1534 Mound St., Sarasota, FL 34236

ABOUT THE PHILIP HANSON HISS AWARD

Architecture Sarasota’s prestigious annual award honors today’s pioneers and champions of innovative design within the global built environment and commemorates the legacy of Philip Hanson Hiss III (1910-1988). Hiss was a driving force and major proponent of the Sarasota School of Architecture. Past Award recipients include architects Toshiko Mori and Lord Norman Foster.

Philip Hiss believed good design was integral to a larger set of values and practices that defined the Sarasota School. These principles included designs adapted to the natural environment and responsive to the socio-cultural context; a spirit of experimentation, innovation, and transformation; and a commitment to democratic ideals and civic responsibility, including accessibility for all. Presented annually, the recipient makes a presentation and the award is bestowed at a dinner celebration.

ABOUT OLIN

OLIN is a design studio with a mission.

They are a team of enthusiastic landscape architects, planners, urban designers, and support staff. From their two locations in Philadelphia and Los Angeles, OLIN is dedicated to creating distinguished landscapes and urban designs worldwide.

OLIN’s work is predicated on developing innovative and tailored approaches to social engagement, environmental and social responsibility and justice, and financial and operational sustainability in the context of awe-inspiring and beautiful designs built with finesse and craft. Their award-winning projects cross boundaries of scale, typology, and site condition, yet are all driven by their central mission: to create places that enhance life.

Beautiful and conscientiously crafted landscapes have a potential to be catalysts for human interaction, recreation, and community. While beauty and craft are integral to our practice, OLIN doesn’t stop there. They approach each project individually, basing design decisions on the underlying expressive power of a particular site in conjunction with specific programmatic possibilities. They synthesize and integrate their findings and aspirations in new site elements and systems that are amplified and layered to create resilient designs that have the power to positively influence communities.

OLIN’s appreciation for the need to constantly deepen their understanding of the unique complexities of urbanity is paramount. They do this by committing to research, education, and technological advancement under the umbrella of OLIN LABS, articulated through five labs: eco, people, tech, design, and build. OLIN engages clients in the beginning by identifying their ambitions and direction for innovation. This approach stimulates deep reflection on the design process, drives passion for exploration, encourages discourse, and provokes them to question assumptions, which in turn, directly informs the project.

By blending values and inquiry, craft, and creativity, OLIN has built a renowned landscape architecture practice over more than forty years, and we thrive in our continued evolution.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Richard’s work spans a range of scales and typologies, focused on expanding the civic capacity of the landscape. Projects such as the competition-winning design for Hunts Point under the Rebuild by Design initiative, Dilworth Park in Philadelphia, and a strategic plan for Detroit’s historic Eastern Market exemplify a practice focused on sustainable, economical and well-crafted public design. Richard is currently completing work for a waterfront pavilion at Sojourner Truth Park along the Hudson River, developing a sea level rise social and environmental justice plan for the communities of Caño Martín Peña and realizing an innovative flood mitigation plan for the NYCHA communities of Red Hook in Brooklyn. Richard serves on the board for Studio Ludo, an innovative play research non-profit, and regularly provides pro-bono design services through Philadelphia’s Community Design Collaborative.

Richard began his studies in landscape architecture at Auburn University, where he earned a Bachelor of Environmental Design and then a Master of Landscape Architecture. He first joined OLIN in 2001 upon receiving his Master of Community Planning. He has served as an invited guest juror at Arizona State University, Auburn University, Temple University and University of Pennsylvania, and is a past member of Auburn University’s Landscape Advisory Council.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Marie Selby Botanical Gardens Downtown Sarasota, 1534 Mound Street, Sarasota, United States