Groundswell: Constructing the Comtemporary Landscape

Groundswell: Constructing the Contemporary Landscape presents 23 landscape-design projects that reclaim and transform urban spaces—many derelict and in need of rehabilitation—into public parks and gardens. Groundswell features examples of the new artistic richness and critical debate in the design of public spaces, from small urban plazas to large parks for post-industrial sites to long range plans for entire urban sectors. The exhibition is organized by Peter Reed, Curator, and Irene Shum, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Architecture and Design, The Museum of Modern Art.

In the last 20 years, the most significant new landscapes have been designed for sites that were reclaimed from conflict, degradation, or abandonment. These include Martha Schwartz’s Exchange Square, (1996– 2000), in downtown Manchester, England, the site of a terrorist bombing; and Kathryn Gustafson’s Garden of Forgiveness, to be completed in 2006, a symbol of the transcendent power of landscape in Beirut’s war-torn city center. Peter Latz’s Landschaftspark Duisburg Nord in Duisburg, Germany (1990–2002), a former Thyssen steelworks encompassing some 600 acres, defines a new kind of park that embraces nature as well as the physical beauty of monumental industrial ruins. Several projects in the exhibition highlight major projects on waterfronts, railroads, airports, and landfills no longer in use. These include Crissy Field, a military airstripturned-park in San Francisco, designed by Hargreaves Associates (1994– 2001), whose restrained design balances ecological processes and the public demand for recreational activities. Other sites featured include industrial riverfronts in Bordeaux and London and constructed landforms for parks on new landfill along Barcelona’s waterfront.

Many of the projects’ transformations are tracked through before-and after visuals to underscore these dramatic shifts in use and topography. Conventional modes of representation such as models, drawings, and photographs, are complemented by large scale video projections—many created for the exhibition—conveying the space, time, context, material, and palette of each project. The projects, located throughout North America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, were selected for their outstanding design and to show a variety of scales, contexts, materials, and types of spaces found in the contemporary landscape. Groundswell is one of the first exhibitions on view in The Joan and Robert Preston Tisch Gallery on the sixth-floor of the renovated and expanded MoMA.

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