Commercial Projects

While Olsen was better known for his residential design work, he also had several commissions for commercial, religious, and educational projects. The following projects reflect those types of projects that were fully realized. Although a large number of non-residential projects remain unbuilt, the body of his conceptual work shows the rationality of his planning approach was translatable into larger, more ambitious schemes. In the late 1950s, Olsen served as an architectural consultant for Herman Ruth, who was the West Coast representative of the Metropolitan Corporation of America, a developer and planner. Olsen typically designed the site plans and developed the perspectives for these projects.