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EXPERIENCE – imagery
A sculpture communicating a narrative of responses.
A celebration of an intimate relationship with Nature.

A vessel… a watering vase… inviting notions of nurture. The vase holds stems identifying the personal character of composing flowers or branches.

The vessel’s metal at it’s base creases as if being the human action of stepping forward or a subtle reminder of a rain boot. There is whimsy and play associated.

Branches reach upward holding wings, abstracted leaves collecting rain. A mesh of reflecting metal suggests a tree canopy of foliage or a cloud in the sky. Climbing vines trace and grow with mesh being a trellis for vines to extend.

A rainy day spouts water falling into the planter below. A sunny day gives a glint to a trickle of water on the surface of the steel. The scheduled cycle of plant irrigation creates a parallel display of water dripping from the spout.

At the base there is a transition of plantings as the sculpture saturates surrounding soil. The contrast of plant species allows the sculpture to impact it’s surrounds. The sculpture is animated. Water as the essential resource of life.

LANDSCAPE – animated
Early concept illustrations for the entrance location note fountain and pond areas. The Rain Catcher concept denotes an interactive water display by interfacing existing irrigation and drainage capacity within planter areas. The very modest trickle of water as a constant can also be regulated and timed. Rain events become a temporal feature enhancing activity of the artwork reflecting water flow. Plants selected for the moist areas surrounding the sculpture reflect their origins in wetland wilderness.

PLANTING – interpretations
Currently plants specified for the on structure planter will be replaced (substituted using the same quantity and size as the construction documents) with native meadow, wetland and woodland understory plants that will tolerate moist conditions as well as full sun/partial shade and other micro-climatic considerations. The proposed native and adaptive plant species will compliment the sculpture enhancing the interpretive features of rain harvesting and native plant communities.

Proposed plants: slough sedge/Carex obnupta and dagger leaf rush/Juncus ensifolious planted underneath the vessel spout in a mix of native rock and cobble, switch grass/ Panicum virgatum “heavy metal” and Autumn moor grass/Seslaria autumnalis will evoke the feel of a woodland grass edge with a backdrop of Deer fern / Blechnum spicant/ and Western sword fern/ Polystichum munitum, in the shadier part of the planter.

A planter is integrated to the top of the vessel and contains a combination of vines, both evergreen flowering clematis armandii and California Grape/ Vitis Califonica “Roger’s red” which will provide beautiful fall color and fruit for local wildlife. The vines will spill out of the vessel and will grow up the branches (red cedar stems) and into the stainless steel mesh, bringing life and color into the sculpture.

The structure silhouette reminds history as agriculture while the oak beam structure is iconic to our resource heritage. A signature toward community resonance is identified and linked to it’s cultural ‘past’ thereby enabling community to evolve identity as the perceivable sense of having a ‘location’ to reference.

Located on a trade route of significance Dawes Crossing is titled in a parallel evocation as integrating community enabling objectives. As a transit point the site moves the people into it and often to wait and sit. That resource constructs opportunities. Recognizing the site as harvesting sun and wind provides income. Income provides community with resources to seed a vision. Establishing place as framework allows completion as community amplitude. The sculpture provides free wireless Internet access. AC outlets are accessible. Lighting can be programmed. Events can be staged. A plaza for markets and kiosks can appear. A lawn and audience space allows music evenings or community festival.

-excerpt taken from land-lab.com

More at dawescrossing.ca

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learn more at the landLAB website.

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Artist Noel Harding and landLAB collaborated on an urban public art project for a mixed use residential/commercial project in downtown Calgary. Landscape River offers an image of Calgary refracted in landscape impositions and reflections. A mountain outline silvered in the sun toward an evening inner glow. A narrative instilled with mirroring vessels and containers that attenuate and embolden the stature of living trees. Held in the hill is a symbolic vessel remembering watering. It is a magnification of the plant in the window with a turning tree signifying the rise of the sun each morning. A river of people as ripples, a stream that stretches extending the site giving weather and seasons. A sequence of LED video screens and linked cameras located to establish ”being there”. Events like this are given to commentary, the community talks, the community listens. The team was one of five teams shortlisted for this project.

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A semester long project which included research and execution of urban design practitioners and methodologies.

Individual research focused primarily on theories from Kongian Yu (The Art of Survival – ‘Urban Agriculture’), Moshe Safdie (The City After the Automobile – ‘The Cardo’), Le Corbusier (Megastructures), Peter Calthorpe (Transit-Oriented-Design), and Kevin Lynch (Image of the City – ‘Lynch Analysis’ )

Colorado State University, Department of Landscape Architecture
Course: LAND 446 Urban Design
Evaluator: B. Goetz
Summer 2009

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See Cardosian Exchange project page for more.

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