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Herzog & de Meuron collaborates with Piet Oudolf to design the Calder Gardens in Philadelphia
Herzog & de Meuron and landscape designer Piet Oudolf are collaborating to create Calder Gardens, which will house and display artworks by American sculptor Alexander Calder. Located between Vine Street and Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia, the 6,500-square-foot site will house a two-story building, half of which is developed underground. Instead of developing the site as a typical museum, the team decided to transform it into a garden as an attractive alternative for the people of Philadelphia.
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Form, color and movement are the most obvious of many outstanding aspects of Calder’s art. We therefore wanted to avoid rather than employ the use of these as possible design elements when we began to conceive an architecture for the presentation of his work. – Jacques Herzog
The design process started with a dialogue with the client, who asked for a new type of art experience place, “an interaction between art, architecture and people”. This led the designers to choose to carve out the land rather than build volumes over it. Gradually the space grew into a sequence of different galleries. The path leads visitors through unexpected spaces, niches and gardens, such as quasi-galleries or open galleries, the sunken or residual gardens. Besides typical spaces for displaying art, the design team understood every corner, staircase and corridor as an opportunity to place art and create a different experience.
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Calder Garden is the first place entirely dedicated to Alexander Calder, an artist from Philadelphia whose moving sculptures, called “mobiles” by Marcel Duchamp, made him one of the best-known artists of the 20th century. According to the New York Times, the initiative for the gardens began when Alexander SC Rower, Calder’s grandson and president of the Calder Foundation, met with Piet Oudolf, the landscape designer famous for his work on New York City’s High Line. The site was never intended to be a museum for Calder, but rather a space for wandering and introspection.
I see my gardens as living sculptures where change is constant. The site is like a canvas to work on, and each plant has a personality that must work with the others. The composition of the garden is variable and will develop with the seasons. For Calder Gardens, the horticultural design must also serve the artworks. I hope people will take the time to stop and think here, fully experience these elements together and have an emotional response that stays with them long after they’ve visited. It’s not what you see, but what you feel. – Piet Oudolf
The project is expected to break ground in 2023 and is scheduled to open in early 2024.
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