Project
Van Eyck, who designed and supervised the construction or renovation of 735 playgrounds in Amsterdam over a period of thirty years from 1947, described his project, the maze-like CC, as “Built Homing” and “Inbetween Realm”. He used “labyrinthine Clarity” concept to construct the conservation between the visitors and the pavilion architecture. So what if we transfer this into landscape? Or bring it into a garden? Like homemaking, gardening can be expressive of human emotion and have capacity to surprise and upset, but also bring people into close proximity with their memory, perception, and body experience. In this project, the garden throughout three distinctive fields, the grassland, the wet meadow and the woodland, engages all senses through vision, tactility, color, height of plant species and form, to draw on children’s playful and joyful experience.
The circular element is incorporated into the ground plan and cohesively integrates three fields together. Children or other visitors, following the various trails, actually step into the labyrinth before they understood what happened inside. The garden is perplexing and provocative, attracting children to stroll, run, chase with each other, explore each route, and get lost within it. And it also follows a continuous sequence, from the beginning to the end of the volume, which blurs the boundaries in between three fields.
The design of planting form and function exert a significant role in creating spiral and labyrinthine quality. With curiosity to plant characteristics, children are expected to inspect, touch, smell the flowers and herbs. And they are also encouraged to climb, bend, crawl in the peculiar spaces shaped by plants. The species in grassland field are like walls and screens, sometimes directing visitors, sometimes blocking their views, which build the secretive maze-like place. And the glade encompassed by understory trees acts like an illuminated destination, but you still can find more paths extend into the canopy woodland. The memory and experience are intersected here, as both remembered and anticipated, consecutive and simultaneous.
