Fourth Landscape
Entry to the Jardins de Métis International Garden Festival competition
with Franco Pisani, 2023
By inverting the Locus Amoenus, or “pleasant place,” we explore the possibilities offered by foregrounding other earthly beings as main actors, rather than mere decoration or backdrop for human life. Humans are invited to the garden as voyeurs, able to eavesdrop on the whispers of herbs and the secrets of rocks.
By relinquishing control, maintenance, and individualism, Fourth Landscape aims to refigure humans’ position and relationships in the universe.
Like the house described in Mark Danielewski’s House of Leaves, this garden has unexpected spatial characteristics—it is larger on the inside than it is on the outside.
In the tradition of the Hortus Conclusus, the garden is small and hidden outside but seemingly infinite inside, a physically inaccessible fourth landscape in contrast with its invitation of thought.
Mirrored panels expand interior space around two rocks located at the foci of the ellipse, while time passes without human constructs of minutes or seconds. Sunrises, sunsets, and full moons pull on the puppet strings of the garden.