Deconstructed Garden
Location: Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, PA
Year: 2016
Deconstructed Garden explores a strategy for drawing a path into a section of East Fairmount Park that is densely vegetated and hidden from the surrounding neighborhood. Flood waters are directed from an adjacent road down a steep slope along the southern boundary of the park, causing an erosion process that overtakes an existing cobblestone path. A new path is framed by weathered steel, and its sharp angles are conspicuously superimposed on the existing park. The path provides a diversion around the older remnant cobblestone path, leading the visitor around the landslides caused by eroded slopes. Taking inspiration from the work of Robert Smithson and other land artists, Deconstructed Garden designs something new via a process of entropy. It challenges a dichotomy between human activity (understood as rational and orderly) and nature (understood as disorganized and wild) through the intentional design of a catastrophic failure.
Location: Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, PA
Year: 2016
Deconstructed Garden explores a strategy for drawing a path into a section of East Fairmount Park that is densely vegetated and hidden from the surrounding neighborhood. Flood waters are directed from an adjacent road down a steep slope along the southern boundary of the park, causing an erosion process that overtakes an existing cobblestone path. A new path is framed by weathered steel, and its sharp angles are conspicuously superimposed on the existing park. The path provides a diversion around the older remnant cobblestone path, leading the visitor around the landslides caused by eroded slopes. Taking inspiration from the work of Robert Smithson and other land artists, Deconstructed Garden designs something new via a process of entropy. It challenges a dichotomy between human activity (understood as rational and orderly) and nature (understood as disorganized and wild) through the intentional design of a catastrophic failure.
