Preliminary Design Presentation

Conceptual Thoughts

Landscape is about memory, our memory and the land’s memory. We remember a flower’s scent, the taste of berries from our grandmother’s yard, and sound of grasses blown about by the wind. These memories stay with us, returning from the recesses of our minds, set off by sensory triggers.

There is also the memory of the earth, the soil, and the plants. Throughout the year and over the years, these elements remember to repeat the cycles of birth, life, death and birth again.

As Simon Schama writes in “Landscape and Memory,” from the pyre rises the phoenix, that through a mantle of ash can emerge a shoot of restored life.”

Plants remember to send shoots up, flower and die back. As designers, we call this cycle the earth’s memory, and it predates and transcends man’s role on the earth. This landscape is earth’s memory of hope, love and beauty. While these words were invented by our species, we believe these qualities reflect what was already there.

“The heart, to be sure, always has something to say about what is to come, to him who heeds it. But what does the heart know? Only a little of what has already happened.”

-I promesi sposi chapter viii (Georgio Bassini, “The Garden of the Finzi-Continis”)

The metaphors of hope, love and beauty endure in this landscape through a subtle mood created by quiet shades of green grasses and grass like plants. The unique, evocative features of ornamental grasses,enhanced by wind and light,fashion a landscape that seems to float and sway above the building, tethered by the distinctive lines of the parapet walls. The colors of the plants,blue gray and sea greencomplement the white, Colton concrete and translucent, light green glass of the building.

There are two views to this landscape, the macro and the micro. From far away one sees the plant vocabulary quietly transition from the manicured grass in the park to the looser, ornamental grasses on the roof. The similar textures naturally lead the eye from ground to sky. While the architecture creates a distinctive elegant form, the grasses tie the whole building back into the earth.

Upon entry, exit and strolling on the roof, the landscape experience is one of light, in contrast to the interior architectural spaces. Up close, the audience sees the details of fluffy, seed heads and the structure of grasses peaking out above the guard rails and the parapet walls. Spare accents of flowering bulbs generate punches of color in the central roof areas. These three central areas are naming opportunities for “Enlightened Gardens,” as well as the ground level east of the monument, where trees could be added to the existing California Sycamore trees.Light to dark to light. Leave with hope and purity.

We propose a simple mix of grasses ranging in height from one to four feet. On the lower levels and as a transition to the park lawn beyond, we would like to use Carex or Sedge, a grass like plant requiring low water and infrequent mowing. The average soil depth on the roof will be 12”, however to accommodate structural beams, the soil level will undulate and flow like the curvilinear shapes of the concrete walls.