Displaying items by tag: landscape architecture

A new fountain has been unveiled at Versailles for the first time in over 300 years. Made from 2,000 gilded glass orbs, Les Belles Dances (2015) by French sculptor Jean-Michel Othoniel is a permanent commissioned artwork designed to honor King Louis XIV.

Collaborating with landscape architect Louis Benech, Othoniel's design was influenced by the King's personal dance instruction book.

The Saint Louis Art Museum has received a $5 million gift from Barbara Taylor, president of the museum’s Board of Commissioners, and her husband Andy Taylor, chairman of the Missouri-based company Enterprise Holdings. The generous donation will fund a new sculpture garden, marking the end of a phased landscape plan created by Michel Desvigne. Desvigne, a Paris-based landscape architect, crafted the plan as part of a major expansion project at the museum, which included an addition by the British architect David Chipperfield. The Saint Louis Art Museum’s East Building opened to the public in June 2013 and a number of Desvigne’s landscape improvements have already been completed.

Construction is currently underway on the sculpture garden, which is located immediately south of the museum.

On September 9, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York will debut its renovated David H. Koch Plaza. The four-block-long plaza, which stretches across the museum’s landmark Fifth Avenue façade, took two years to renovate. The $65 million-project was helmed by OLIN, a Los Angeles- and Philadelphia-based landscape architecture, urban design, and planning firm. David H. Koch, a Museum Trustee, funded the entire project.

The revamped plaza will include new paving, energy-efficient lighting, tree-shaded allées, and seating areas for visitors.

“I started to cry a bit when I saw the finished result for the first time this morning,” said architect Annabelle Selldorf at the June 27 press preview of the newly expanded Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Michael Conforti, director of the Institute, also teared up as he addressed the crowd gathered to celebrate the reopening after 10 years and $145 million of time and funds were invested into reconstruction. Visitors might have similarly emotional reactions to the results, including Pritzker-winner Tadao Ando’s multipurpose visitor center, which prioritizes circulation and the views of lush hills behind the Clark; landscape architecture firm Reed Hilderbrand’s stepped pools, which create a peaceful setting primed for meditation; and Selldorf’s redesign of the main museum building’s interior, which glorifies the Clark’s collection.

San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) broke ground on its highly anticipated expansion on Wednesday, May 29, 2013. Around 300 supporters gathered to witness the kick-off of the construction project that will add 225,000-square-feet to the museum. The renovated space is expected to reopen in 2016.

 Snøhetta, an international architecture, landscape architecture, and interior design firm based in Oslo, Norway and New York City, designed SFMOMA’s expansion, which is expected to cost around $610 million. 89% of the capital has already been collected through fundraising. Officials upped their original estimate for construction from $555 million in May.

 SFMOMA’s expansion will more than double the existing exhibition space and provide nearly six times as much public space as their currently Mario Botta-designed building. The renovation will create a new outdoor terrace, a sculpture terrace, and state-of-the-art conservation studios. The museum will also take a more environmentally sensitive approach to day-to-day operations. SFMOMA hopes to gain LEED Gold certification by reducing their energy costs, water use, and wastewater generation.