The American landscape architect Laurie Olin shares his humanistic approach to designing great places.

Sitting Still gets inside the mind of the prophetic and visionary urban designer Laurie Olin (b. 1938) to see what he sees. At a time when global values increasingly reflect “profit over people,” Olin’s vision has always been to create a more democratic and egalitarian society through healthy, shared public space.
The documentary invites the voices of other design luminaries into the conversation: the pre-eminent architects Frank Gehry and Billie Tsien, and the esteemed landscape designer and artist Walter Hood, among others. According to these global thinkers and designers, environmental and human stakes have never been higher, and the most pressing challenges of the natural environment and social disunity can be addressed in terms of how we think about the marks we make upon the land.

Laurie Olin has designed many beloved parks, gardens and public spaces in America, including the Washington Monument grounds, the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden, the Getty Center gardens, the Battery Park City Master Plan, Columbus Circle, Bryant Park, and Independence National Historic Park, to name a few. His imprint on cityscapes extends all over the world, most notably at Canary Wharf and Bishop’s Gate in London, Villa Olimpica in Barcelona, and the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin.