REVEALING The Once Invisible: Noli Tangere

TERRAGRAM TEAM:

Vladimir Sitta, Anita Madura and Richard Faber

Jardins de metis 2011 competition winner

I want to go to Jardins de metis.  I say that every year.  And with every new year of competition winners, I am more convinced than ever, that a trip is necessary.  I was particularly captivated by the Terragrams 2011 winning design:  Noli Tangere.  It's landscape design that turns our way of thinking inside out or makes the invisible visible. 

Anita Madura was kind of enough to answer a few questions about the project.

"Vladmir Sitta started his professional life in then communist Czechoslovakia.  Despite a number of competition successes and completed projects, he set himself adrift, landing in Australia via West Germany.  Terragram came about as a result of a series of coincidences - almost accidentally.  The impetus was a winning entry in a Battle of Vinegar Hill Competition in 1985. 

Terragram's portfolio is diverse from theme parks, environmental sculptures, furniture, stage design to parks and gardens.  Driven by an obsession to escape cliches, Terragram has gained an international reputation for innovation and technical experimentation.  Terragram's projects have been featured in more than 40 books and 2 monographs - 'Transforming Uncommon Ground' by T. Macgowan and 'Room 4.1.3 - Innovations in Landscape Architecture' by R. Weller.  Terragram's projects have also been televised by Arte Television and the BBC.

PO:  Why did you apply for Jardin des metis competition?
Upon Vladmir's return from a month in Europe, there was a lull in the studio.  The idea of creating a secret garden (the theme for Jardins de metis) intrigued us.  Jardins de metis competition reinvigorated us - it was a fast paced and impulsive competition entry, with the initial concept evolving mostly from exploratory doodles, as most of Vladmir's do.

PO:  Describe the Noli tangere.
Our project Noli tangere, approached this theme of secret gardens, by proposing an unusual experience of nature, typically invisible and 'secret' to the human eye.  It has become increasingly rare especially for urban visitors to experience the plant microcosmos - to look through a forest of plant stalks, smell the scents of damp earth and vegetation, observe the bugs, ants and grasshoppers at eye-level, perhaps even to eat fruit without using our hands.  In Noli tangere, the secret is in revealing the once invisible.

The exact shape of the garden was generated by imagining the steps of a blindfolded person circumnavigating the selected site, from which a 'secret' shape emerged.

Supports (posts) will be inserted at regular intervals, following this shape, creating a strong frame for the garden.  These supports will be interconnected with hessian ropes and criss-crossed like a spider-web, varying tautness to form valleys and hills.

Over this, a strong geo-textile mat will be a lid and clipped to ropes.  Under this mat, another layer of hessian will form the ceiling.  Holes will be cut into the mat to allow visitors to peek through, with magnifying glasses of varying degrees of enlargement attached at each opening.

We envision a strip of  meadow to be transplanted onto the matting/soil and supplemented by additional planting/seeding of wildflowers, for example dandelion and chrysanthemum.   The external entrance to the garden will be through a double layer of hessian reinforced with ropes, smeared with mud and hydro-seeded with grass.  At the end of the festival, this temporary garden could be simply dismantled and largely used as compost.

I've heard of putting your nose to the grindstone, but this takes it one step further. 
__________________________________
I asked Anita if she would elaborate on
some of Terragram's current projects:

"Currently, Terragram is involved in a number of different projects at varying stages, including two small parks in Woolloomooloo, Sydney (Walla Mulla Park, which recently opened this March and Bourke Street Park, only in the beginning phases of construction), the Master Architects garden for the International Horticulture Expo in Xi'an, China opening to visitors in late April, Jardins de metis garden opening in June, and several small private gardens across Sydney.

There are two ongoing pursuits by Vladimir Sitta, both concerned with time, going back almost 30 years.  The first, is concerned with the ecological activation of constructed surfaces like facades and roofs, bettering conditions for future human life. and the second how to commemorate the finite dimension of human life, the end, the death."

www.terragram.com.au

Paradise Found: Rosetta Sarah Elkin

TINY Taxonomy

ROSETTA SARAH ELKIN

International Garden Festival - Les Jardins Metis

June 26 - October 3, 2010

Chelsea, Chaumont and Metis.  The 3 biggies of the garden festival world.  I logged onto the jardin de metis site to find out who the winners were for 2010 season:  Three winners, all unknown to me.  I started with Rosetta Sara Elkin's project Tiny Taxonomy.

Rosetta was kind enough to talk to me about her background and her project, which I publish here in its entirety, including the plant list she sent me.

"I began my professional career in garden design, which is a scale that continues to define my approach to landscape architecture; seasonality, process and vegetative transformation.  After completing a Bachelor of Fine Arts, I was trained at the University of Toronto, receiving a MLA with distinction.  I have been working professionally at Inside Outisde/Petra Blaisse (Amsterdam) on a range of large scale and international assignments.  In 2007, I received a grant to set up my own design studio: RSE.  My work addresses an ongoing interest in the role of vegetation as a theoretical tool for framing and conceptualizing large scale urbanism and spatial design.

Les Jardin Metis is one of the most renowned festivals in the world, located in a truly Canadian setting.  A festival such as this offers an opportunity to contribute to the contemporary discussion of gardens, of what defines them and how they are received by the public.  Essential qualities of the regional landscape are condensed to the scale vegetation, which engages the rich cultural history of gardening.  Gardens have always been sites of transformation, change, light, shadow, movement and perspective - made evident by the immediate conditions and the local elements.  It is my hope that Tiny Taxonomy will remind visitors that contemporary festivals are also about imaginative gardening. "

 Copyright Rosetta Sarah Elkin.  No usage without permission.

"Nature will bear the closet inspection.

She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, 
and take an insect view of its plain."

-Henry David Thoreau.

"The theme of this year's festival is 'Paradise'.  Each entry was asked to consider a contemporary vision for a garden along this theme.

Paradise is a cultural construct which often reflects the collective values of a people or religious group.  As such, ideas about paradise are highly specific and underscore a set of common experiences and perspectives which are not universally applicable.

What is universal about notions of paradise is that they often represent an idealization of nature.  Furthermore, these idealizations (often deployed as gardens) tend to depict entire ecosystems (the grandeur of nature), focusing on vistas, sight lines, and compositions rather than the individual players in the system.

'Tiny Taxonomy' attempts to highlight the beauty and frailty of paradise's most inconspicuous and often ignored players:  the plants of the forest floor.  By providing a partial inventory of some of the smallest operators of the forest ecosystem and by elevating these species from their traditional position at the forest floor (underfoot), it is hoped that their highly delicate and intricate nature will be made evident to visitors of the garden.  Tiny unpacks and re-presents the garden, inviting the visitor to consider the beauty of individual species."

 Copyright Rosetta Sarah Elkin.  No usage without permission.

"This festival offers designers a chance to experiment with ideas in real time and with an appreciative audience.  Tiny is designed as an occasion to isolate certain specimens in their natural habitat.  Gardens take years to develop to their full potential and although the Festival runs over several months, it is not enough time to offer visitors a truly vegetative experience.  The design uses this disadvantage to its benefit by planting small species which require little time to fill in.  Instead 'Tiny Taxonomy' will be planted just as it is imagined.  All the planting and installation will be done in-situ, starting in May."

I have been looking at my calendar and trying to decide when to make the trip to jardin metis.  How often does one get the chance to visit paradise?

PLANT LIST

*The planters are mostly imagined as holding a single species, but some combinations are required to hold seasonal interest.

*Groundcovers are added as required with species that do not form a good ground cover.

*Over maintenance to trim height, leaves and typical deadheading can be kept to a minimum, as decay is part of the forest ambiance.

 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND INFORMATION ABOUT THE FESTIVAL:

The plants in Tiny Taxonomy were donated by a well-known and specialty nursery in the area:

http://www.pepinierecharlevoix.ca/

The Gardens are located on route 132 in Grand-Metis, on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River, mid-way between Rimouski and Matane. 

http://www.refordgardens.com/english/festival 

TO GET IN TOUCH WITH ROSETTA:

rselkin@gmail.com

*Please respect the copyright on all these images. Contact Rosetta for usage.