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A Plastic Garden |
Projects
Sunderland Veterans’ Memorial and Park
Durfee Gardens
A Strolling Garden
A Plastic Garden
A Kettle Hole Garden
Bartlett Court
The James Rose Center
Private Access
Clark's Passage
Complete List of Projects
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The Plastic Garden fractures space and light to create useful,
playful space for a young family and the children of their neighborhood.
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Except for the children who played here the neighborhood was bleak
and spiritless: a utilitarian subdivision in which the existing forest
was clear-cut to a uniform depth behind each equally set back house
on each half acre lot. The result was continuous corridors of space
between the houses and the forest, lacking privacy, character and
utility. |
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The client's house, conceived in no relation to its site and completely
clad in vinyl with few windows or doors, sat upon the opened land
like an abandoned plastic toy. |
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The plan had two objectives: first, to bring the razed woodland
back to meet the house, carefully carving from it three irregular
descending terraced spaces; and second, to reach out from the plastic
house with playful, light-transforming, plastic panels which would
engage the woodland, as well as the stone and wood constructions of
the garden. |
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Now the static patterns of the neighborhood are counterpoised
by the complex and playful spatial geometry of the garden; and a funny
kind of balance is achieved between the plastic house and its site.
Here the garden creates an intriguing entry by composing transparent,
translucent and opaque colored panels with the existing woodland,
morning light, new deck and gravel terrace. |
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Both synthetic (derived from the house) and "natural"
(derived from the woods) materials play with the light and are used
as edges to volumes which have a distinct quality that is of this
place. The decks overhead structure is tilted and warped, assembled
to evoke the classic childrens game of "pick up sticks,"
but also as the vines grow to provide welcome shade on the deck. |
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The character of the design is revealed in this animated, shoji-like
experience of birches behind the playful Plexiglas layers. |
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This Plastic Garden is a kind of wacky colored origami into which
one enters. The experience unfolds within the garden, redefining the
outer context of woods, subdivision and even sky by coloring, blocking
and/or silhouetting them; and forming an inspiring, useful spatial
experience for the family and the children who play here. |
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The Plastic Garden has received several awards including a regional
design award for residential design from the Boston Society of Landscape
Architects and a national design award from Landscape Architecture
magazine. It has been published and discussed in numerous periodicals
and books, including The New Tech Garden (2001) and Designed
Landscape Forum 1 (1998). |
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