2024 Olmsted Network Conference: Preservation and Mental Health

Preservation and Mental Health: Adapting Olmsted Designs to Modern Needs

Buffalo and Poughkeepsie are home to buildings and grounds designed by Olmsted, Vaux and Withers that provide mental health services. This panel of experts will examine how communities are using and adapting state institutions and their landscapes.

Paris Roselli (moderator)
Paris Roselli has been the President of the Richardson Olmsted Campus (ROC) in Buffalo, NY, since 2022. This adaptive reuse project, underway since 2004, was originally a Kirkbride-plan asylum, codesigned by Henry Hobson Richardson and Olmsted. In 2022, the project renewed its focus following setbacks created by the coronavirus epidemic. Roselli manages activities that advance restoration of the OlmstedVaux South Lawn, the development of a Western New York architecture center and building stabilization and
programming on the South Lawn— all to reintegrate the campus with the community as a vibrant hub of activity. Prior to this role, Roselli was an executive who led business transformation initiatives including new payments technologies, intuitive online and mobile tools, and user-friendly security solutions.

Robert Kirkbride
Robert Kirkbride directs an architectural design and research studio in New York City and is Professor of Architecture and Product Design at Parsons School of Design, where he received the University Distinguished Teaching Award and served as dean of the School of Constructed Environments. Kirkbride is also Spokesperson and a Trustee for PreservationWorks, a national non-profit organization advocating the preservation and adaptive reuse of remaining Kirkbride Plan psychiatric hospitals. Through projects such as his award-winning multimedia online book, Architecture and Memory, and the Morbid Anatomy Museum, Kirkbride explores the interplay of memory, identity and placemaking. Kirkbride has been a Visiting Scholar at the Canadian Centre for Architecture and Architect-inresidence at the Bogliasco Foundation in Genoa, Italy.

Yvonne Laube
Yvonne Laube is a public information officer for the Poughkeepsie Public Library District. She is also a freelance graphic designer and artist. In 2014, when Hudson River State Hospital in Poughkeepsie, NY, was purchased for redevelopment, the potential loss of the architecture and history of the site spurned her to advocate for its preservation and adaptive reuse. In 2015, Laube began advocating for HRSH’s preservation and reuse as a volunteer for PreservationWorks. She was invited to serve on the Town of Poughkeepsie Historic Preservation Commission in 2016, where she continues to advocate today. She graduated from the State University of New York with a B.A. in design.

Jennifer L. Thomas
Jennifer L. Thomas is an Assistant Professor in the Landscape Architecture Program at Virginia Tech. She explores landscape architecture as a cultural medium that reflects social complexities and cultural ideologies through built form. Primary subjects in her work include the history and theory of landscape architecture, cultural heritage studies, landscape preservation and historical institutional landscapes, especially those of Olmsted and Vaux. Her dissertation, “Landscape, Madness, and State: The Emerging Insane Asylum System of Nineteenth-Century New York State” (2019), examines the intersections between landscape design, architecture, and medicine at major state-funded facilities. She has presented at various venues, including the Society for Architectural Historians, the American Association for the History of Medicine and at the bicentennial symposium, Olmsteds: Landscapes
and Legacies.