Anne Whiston Spirn Oral History

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In 2025 the Pioneers of American Landscape Design® Oral History series will highlight influential educator, author and practitioner Anne Whiston Spirn, FASLA. 

The Pioneers Oral History series is an ever-growing, award-winning collection of richly produced videotaped first-person interviews with significant practitioners that currently features twenty oral histories. Each profile in the series examines each designer’s personal and professional history, their overall design philosophy, and how that approach was carried out in their most emblematic projects. The richly edited video segments include never-before-seen archival footage, new photography, and on-location videography. The final product also includes a complete transcript and a collection of approximately twenty illustrated personal recollections written by colleagues, collaborators and friends. 

The oral history with Spirn, will be videotaped at Spirn’s home and office in Nahant, Massachusetts and on the MIT campus. If funding permits videotaping will also take place in critical project locations including West Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and The Woodlands, Texas.