Color photograph of a light skinned woman with dark hair wearing a black turtleneck and blue jeans, looking at the camera

Lauren Stimson

Gilmore D. Clark and Michael I. Rapuano/Kate Lancaster Brewster Rome Prize
February 5–July 5, 2024
Profession
Landscape Architect and Partner, STIMSON, Princeton and Cambridge, Massachusetts
Project title
Seeing Rural: Embracing Art, Craft, and Slowness in the Italian Landscape
Project description

Seeing Rural focuses on studying the pattern language of the rural agrarian landscape through a variety of mediums that are based entirely in art and craft. The lack of connection to the rural and wildness is widespread and perhaps one of the greatest tragedies of our time. Similarly, there is a decline in the profession of landscape architecture related to drawing and craft in favor of the computer. My project is rooted in the belief that there is an essential place for art and craft in our practice, beyond what we construct, that informs the process of design. The materiality of these studies will take inspiration from the places being documented, relying on fieldwork and site visits. Expressive methods such as drawing, painting, and fiber explorations in knitting, weaving, and sewing will be generated entirely by hand and focus on documenting the intersection of the agrarian and wild in the Italian countryside.