Redford Berries, 2021
Les Jardins de Métis/Reford Gardens Festival v.2021 International Design Competition Entry
Text from above:
Our proposal takes an off-the-shelf item commonly used for enhanced visibility in urban contexts - the convex mirror - and places it into the natural environment to create Reford Berries - a tongue-in-cheek non-native species (installation) newly introduced at Reford Gardens. Composed of 31 acrylic convex mirrors of various sizes, each curved array provides visitors with an enhanced view of the gardens allowing them to see in multiple directions at once. Visitors are invited to wander around and gather at one of several arrays, experiencing an exponential widening of one’s field of view intensifying one’s perception of nature. Creating a kind of hyper-visibility or enhanced awareness, visitors can now connect with the landscape in a way they have not done before as all elements of the natural environment seem to converge in front of them. This experiential complexity cannot be understated as each change in a visitor’s position creates new perceptual readings of their surroundings - each change in position causing objects to emerge and then fade away in an ever-changing mosaic of panoramic images. From a distance, the installation appears somehow natural yet not. And when co-planted with other (natural) plant species - Bird’s Nest Fern and Garden Phlox - this ambiguity is further emphasized as visitors are left to decide where this artificial world ends and the natural world begins. Requiring little to no ground disturbance, Reford Berries is designed to be non-site specific but would be best located anywhere within Reford Gardens where nature provides a natural canopy that can reflect down onto its mirrored arrays.
Suggested Plant List:
Bird’s Nest Fern (asplenium nidus)
Garden Phlox (phlox paniculata)
© 2021 atelier Christophe Du Chemin
