DryStoneGarden

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I recently made a series of postcard-sized watercolors of Daniel Libeskind’s addition to the Contemporary Jewish Museum in Jessie Square, an exciting bit of architecture with nothing else like it in San Francisco. The original brick building is gorgeous in its own right, a PG&E substation dating from 1881, designed by Willis Polk, listed on the National Register in 1974, and taken over by the museum in 1984. A few years ago the museum renovated the interior and expanded the building by adding the skewed metal cube shown in my watercolors. The design is wonderfully executed, and though there’s a part of me that dislikes seeing a skewed metal Borg cube perched upon a beautiful historic building, a much larger part loves the way this particular metal cube perches on this particular historic building.

It’s probably the most effective addition I’ve seen for a building like this. As a treatment of a historic structure, it follows a template laid out by IM Pei’s addition to the Louvre, executing the addition with forms and materials that completely contrast with the original structure. There are a few motives for this. One is that there have been so many failed attempts at matching historic construction techniques that there is a reluctance to try again. It’s often too hard or expensive to find the right materials or builders to match the existing work. The second is that modern concerns such as earthquake and fire safety often require new building techniques that will create an underlying mismatch even if the look of the old structure is maintained. It’s dishonest to copy the look of the old building if the underlying structure does not also match. The third is that by offering a contrast to the old structure, people will be able to interpret which are the historic elements and perhaps maintain an appreciation or understanding of them. We don’t build brick buildings like this any more; preserving the building allows people a chance to connect with the era when we did. A fourth reason, perhaps less admirable but undeniably a factor, is that donors, boards, architects, and the public all like to see flashy new designs. You advance quicker in the design world if your works stands out and attracts attention instead of sensitively blending with its context.

These are all valid reasons, but they are sometimes a little shortsighted. These steel and glass additions don’t always respect the past, often they overpower it. I thought the glass pyramid in front of the Louvre was an eyesore when I first saw it years ago, and I stand by that judgement, even if the current consensus is that the pyramid was a success. But even if Libeskind’s addition shares some of its lineage with the Louvre, it’s so much more beautifully executed, with a complex presence that energizes the site. From some vantage points it dominates the scene, but from others it’s barely visible, peaking around the corner with its intriguing angles. And underlying everything, the structure wonderfully matches its use; it’s form really does match with its function as the home for the Contemporary Jewish Museum. There’s something perfect about joining the old and the new on a building that houses a modern museum for an ancient culture.

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A few years back, after a visit to the Bristlecone Pines in the White Mountains, I included a link to a collection of photos by Rachel Sussman, a photographer whose project is photographing living things more than 2,000 years old. She has a book out now, The Oldest Living Things on Earth. Some amazing plants. I like to think that stonework should be designed to last 100 years, but 2,000 year old plants make that seem like short-term thinking. There’s a TEDTalk on her website, also worth watching.

Piet Oudolf documentary teaser from Thomas Piper on Vimeo.

There’s a Piet Oudolf documentary in the works. I’m looking forward to it; even the trailer is worth watching.

Another Oudolf video, about the Boon Family Garden in the Netherlands, and one more here.

The Fountain Concept

This should be my last post from the garden show, though I’ve been installing a lot of the materials used in the show — the basalt kickboard and walls, the chozubachi and birdbath, the limestone pavers, many of the plants — into real gardens, so they’ll probably show up again in photos at some point. But this is the last post specifically from the show. And actually this fountain was the starting point for the garden; before I signed up for the show, this was the first idea that got me thinking I might actually want to do a garden and what kind of garden I might want to make. It’s a fountain I had seen in photos from a temple in Japan where the monks place a leaf each morning for the water to spill from. I loved the concept — plants and stone and water joined in a single simple ritual — and the closeup image, but the actual fountain is not very graceful. I wanted to do something similar, but with a less formal piece of stone. I spent some time looking around for a suitable piece, but I couldn’t ever find anything I liked. Everything was either very rough or very slick, nothing in between, and nothing had the lip or overhang that I was looking for. I ended up having to fabricate the stone for the fountain myself.

The Original Block

The best prospect I could find was this chunk of basalt at the stoneyard. The stone had a weakness in it that I thought I could exploit to get a suitable shape for the fountain. I bought it and, because it was too heavy to move without equipment, I started working on it right there in the stoneyard. It was far and away my best prospect for the fountain and I felt like I had only one shot at getting it right, so I started slowly. I went all around it with a big chisel at first, then a single jack, and finally a heavy sledgehammer, tracing the weakness, hitting it softly at first and then harder and harder with each tool. I was very patient with it, so slow that the little crowd that formed got bored and wandered away. I can’t describe how pleased I was when it finally broke in the shape I wanted. In the photo below, you can see that it didn’t break perfectly straight, but the ragged section of the break was low on the stone where it would be out of sight, so I was immensely satisfied. I may have even danced a jig.

The Block Split in Two

Reverse Angle of the Split Block

After breaking it out of the block, I had the stoneyard drill a hole through it, and then I carved out a basin at the top. I cleaned up the edges at the top a little with my chisels, but I left the outer shape pretty much as it came out of the block. After that, I fed a hose into the hole, hooked it up to the pump, and tested it. I thought it might take some finagling to get the water to spill properly from the leaf, but that worked fine almost from the beginning. I tried a Camelia leaf first — the leaf the monks use in Japan — and then switched to Arbutus ‘Marina,’ a plant that’s more to my taste. Toyon and Madrone would also work but I couldn’t find good specimens to include in the display garden and I wanted the leaf to be from a plant that was present in the garden. In the future I plan to try Western Spicebush and Redtwig Dogwood leaves as well, but they weren’t yet in leaf at the time of the show. The stone holding the leaf in place is one I found on the beach in Baja. The flower is a Hellebore. I think a Spicebush flower might work; I’m not sure what other natives to try (if anyone has one to suggest, please let me know in the comments). I’m pleased at how it all came together, and I got a great response from people at the show, so I’ll probably make at least one more like it in the future.

The Final Stone Fountain

Here are the photos I took during the show. I may be biased, but I thought the gardens were really good this year, with a lot of cool things to see. This first one was probably my favorite, a nautical/waterfront themed garden by McKenna Landscape. All of the wood is repurposed from old fences and decks. The seating area was great and I liked the discrete little water feature reminiscent of the bilge holes of a boat.

Terra Ferma had a great trellis built with old grape vines lashed onto a metal frame, and most of the plants around it were native.

Greenlee made a sublime meadow with grape vines, grasses, and scattered flowers. The photo doesn’t do it justice.

The water wheel and submarine were both fun.

This garden did a great job of making stormwater tanks (the black plastic drums inside the metal frames) look good. I also liked the dry streambeds designed to hold the overflow water from the tanks.

And I also liked the chairs made out of old propane tanks in the garden by the students at ASU. I sat in this white one for a while during a slow point in the show; very comfortable and one of the many nice places to hang out during the show. It was great to have seen all of these gardens get built and then to spend so much time at the show amongst them.

Here are the photos of my display garden in the flower and garden show. I thought of doing posts during setup and during the show, but, wow, the garden show has a way of swallowing you up and not giving you a moment of free time.

Even after doing the show twice, it still kind of blows my mind that the gardens are all setup indoors on top of concrete slabs and that it all gets built during a few hectic days.

Two similar views from the side of the garden, early in construction and then during the show.

Meadowfoam was one of the plant stars of the garden. The garden also had Species Tulips, Irises, and a Western Azalea in bloom, and a Redtwig Dogwood cultivar, ‘Arctic Fire,’ that had everyone admiring the orange-y red stems.

The Western Azalea was intensely fragrant the first few days of the show.

This is the stone basin from my last post, after I polished it. I floated hellebore flowers in it.

And a photo of the fountain I made. The Irises in front of the fountain were full of flowers when we setup the garden, but I accidentally knocked them off while I was adjusting the flow of the water. I took photos of some of the other display gardens too. There were a lot of nice ones this year. I’ll probably post those photos in a few days.