Grand Rapids Art Museum

 

I am breaking my promise not to include any previous work images into this blog because my proper website is taking longer than expected to finish. I thought I might as well stick in a few things here for now. So, this is a project I worked on with a landscape architect. The images are part of 3 proposals we sent to Munkenbeck and Marshall who were responsible for the proposed building at the time. I decided to keep the drawings freehand because the design is very simple and also to the reflect the fact that we were only at the beginning of the concept stage.

House in Russia

In 2007 I was asked by a landscape architect to help with a simple landscape proposal for a house in Russia, situated in forest just outside of Moscow designed by Zaha Hadid Architects. There were other people bidding for the job and we only had a few days to come up with a quick concept.

The client wanted to live there with his daughter. Having recently seen the film Pans Labyrinth, which was also situated in a think forest, I decided to create a secret garden for young girl that is separated from the rest of the grounds so she play there with her friends. The planting around that area would create a visual shield and a small river cut that area off from the rest of the house giving her a sanctuary space.The landscape architect has ideas about what plants to use.

The idea of adding a river was because I wanted it to appear as though it was cutting into the building and emerging on the other side. A swimming pool inside the house existed on the same axis and wanted that to form a virtual link to this river. There were lookout points, and paths that stretch across the site and various other bits and pieces that created links with views and created tension in various parts of the site.

The scheme was accepted by the client and the design was handed over to the landscape design company to develop with ZHA. As far as I know, the current design being built is has not changed much from the basic sketch above.

3 images from a rough model I worked on at the time. I was carving up the landscape to insert the river and the paths. (The original building model was created by ZHA)