Entitled Towards Paradise, the landscape installation is sited at the end of the Arsenale, within the overgrown grounds of the former Church of the Virgins, a Benedictine nunnery that was destroyed in the late 1800s. Gustafson Porter (London) and Gustafson Guthrie Nichol (Seattle) have been commissioned by Biennale Director Aaron Betsky to create this installation .
This is the first time that the architecture Biennale will feature a major landscape installation. Entitled “Out There: Architecture Beyond Building,” the premise for the 2008 Biennale is that “…architecture is not building… (it) is something else.”
The design based itself around three major spaces derived from three principles: Remember, Nourish, Enlighten.
You can see further project description here and here, but only based on the images viewed through my square web window of the world, and a few projects experienced firsthand, I’m continually impressed with the often epic simplicity of Gustafson’s work. It’s too often understated that a project’s intuitiveness can be an imperative mean’s of its creation and existence, rather then pure functionalism. If it can conjure thought, and displacement from ones immediate unfortunate circumstances, then designs that provide spaces of positive psychology need to be created by Landscape Architects and presented to developers so that they can be further understood and utilized in the landscape.
{images via Architect and Dezeen}