On the western edge of Van Dusen Botanical Garden sits a neglected and aesthetically confused Stone Garden. Below it, is a reservoir that has been sitting decomissioned and abandoned for decades. Both have immense experiential potential, and their adjacency presents a unique opportunity to revitalize architecture alongside landscape architecture in an integrated manner; something we deem necessary and valuable as MARCLA students.
We propose to program the submerged reservoir into an art gallery, with an associated open air art garden integrated into the landscape above. The transient nature of this program reinforces our landscape design approach of embracing seasonal decay and change. Our proposal acts as a foil to typical landscape maintenance regimes which often centre around freezing plants in a certain desireable state, reducing them to objects for our consumption, rather than systems of autonomous beings.
Spatially, the layout of the landscape above is informed by the structure of the reservoir below. In this way the architecture and landscape are interdependent. The straight lines forming garden beds and circulation paths are intended to function as a measure of change; as self seeding species spread, and gravel path edges soften, the evolution of the site will be legible.