Meet Austin Allen, a member of our Olmsted 200 Honorary Committee!

Austin Allen
Associate Professor of Practice, University of Texas-Arlington, School of Architecture

Since first discovering Olmsted as a landscape architecture student, Austin Allen, now a principal in DesignJones LLC, has been on an ever-evolving and often complex journey to better understand Olmsted’s far-reaching impact.

In this video, Allen notes how Olmsted’s writing on the South made visible “the impact of slavery … upon the souls of people of an emerging nation… so that we might arrive at a deeper understanding about ourselves….”

Says Allen: “…the African American experience was connected to [Olmsted’s] life journey….He lived with an awareness that African Americans played a major part in shaping the landscape ….”