Get an Architect's Perspective With a New Tour Series at Olana

Even if you have visited Frederic Church’s masterpiece of design before, you can see it through a different lens this summer with a special Olana tour program.

The Olana Partnership and Steven Myron Holl Foundation’s ‘T’ Space have launched “Architects on Olana,” a series of tours by leading contemporary architects. Visitors will have a chance to explore the architecture, design and setting of the Hudson River School artist’s 19th century home through the perspective of current practitioners.

The series launched on June 1, but there is plenty of time to catch a tour before the special program ends on November 2. Architects leading tours in the new few months include Clara (Mu) He, Christine Wassman, and the pairings of Cathryn Dwyre with Chris Perry, Jane Stagebert with Tim Bade and Daniel Sachs with Kevin Lindores.

The tours are running during the length of the latest exhibition at Olana. For “In Frederic Church’s Ombra: Architecture in Conversation with Nature,” the historic site invited architects and artists to respond to the transitional outdoor rooms that are so important to Church’s vision of home, art and landscape. Participants explored the relationship between architecture and nature with renderings, models, sketches, video and animation.

The featured work includes pieces by Stan Allen, Tatiana Bilbao, Chris Doyle, Arantxa Solis Pozos and Sage and Coombe Architects, among many others. The exhibition was curated by Barry Bergdoll, the Meyer Schapiro Professor of Art History at Columbia University and a curator in the Department of Architecture and Design at MoMA.

For more information on the exhibition, which runs through November 3, visit the information page here. For the full schedule of “Architects on Olana” tours visit the tour page here. Tickets for the tours sell out quickly, so advanced purchase is recommended.

How to Visit
Address: 5720 Route 9G, Hudson, N.Y.
Hours: The grounds at Olana are open daily, 8:30 a.m. to sunset, year-round. The interior of the house can be seen by guided or self-guided tour — tickets are required for all interior visits. For more information, visit the website here.
Admission: Free access to the grounds; a variety of tours are available at member and non-member prices. Visit the tour page here for full information.
Directions: Take Amtrak to Hudson, then a taxi (about a 10-minute ride). By car, Olana is about 2.5 hours from Brooklyn via the Taconic State Parkway.

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