Hasta La Ideas

Landscape architecture firm Martha Schwartz Partners references Bedouin carpets and sand dunes in teardrop-shaped landscaping for a green retreat in the centre of an Abu Dhabi business district (+ slideshow).

Martha Schwartz Partners designed Sowwah Square for a site at the heart of Abu Dhabi’s new central business district on Al Maryah Island, formerly known as Sowwah Island.

The 2.6 hectare public plaza features colourfully patterned granite paving and an assortment of plant-covered mounds. There are also granite seating elements, garden beds, sculpted hedges and rows of Indian fig trees.

“The inspiration for the square was derived from the nature and culture inherent to the Arabian Peninsula: dunes, traditional irrigation systems (falaj), oases, bedouin textiles and the popular use of formal clipped hedges in the United Arab Emirates, drawing connections with the French baroque château gardens,” said the architects.

Green mounds, a typical feature in the Al Maryah, feature patches of plants of different colours and textures. Species such as the Golden Ice Plant Lampranthus, which has bright orange flowers, are planted next to the Purple Lady Iresine, which features small purple foliage.

“All the plant species used in the project were selected for their hardiness, low maintenance and drought and heat tolerance,” the architects said.

The teardrop-shaped mounds are dotted through the square. Some form centrepieces to the granite benches, acting as wind shelters.

The polished grey-granite benches encircle the mounds and have grooves carved into their surfaces, allowing bubbling streams of water to run across them to offer visitors relief from the heat.

The benches come in six variations. Some have extended seats, while others have high backs or wider leaning space. At night, the base of each benches is illuminated.

The pavement is set with patterned sections of honed, flamed and polished granite, and extend outwards in layers to emphasise the teardrop shapes.

Sculpted hedges line the edges of low garden beds, with native grasses planted in the centre to sway in the wind.

Martha Schwartz is based in London. Her studio also recently completed a landscaped park in Chongqing, China, filled with faceted metal structures.

Here’s a project description from Martha Schwartz Partners:

Sowwah Square

Sowwah Square is the first development within the larger Sowwah Island master plan in Abu Dhabi and is intended to be the centre piece of the island development, providing a green retreat at the centre of the new commercial hub.

On the southern edge of Sowwah Island, the main urban space is located on top of a two-level retail podium and creates a landscape setting for the Sowwah Square complex. Future phases of the project will include a 5 star Business Hotel, serviced apartments, and additional retail complexes adjacent to Sowwah Square.

The inspiration for the square was derived from the nature and culture inherent to the Arabian Peninsula: dunes, traditional irrigation systems (Falaj), oasis, Bedouin textiles and the popular use of formal clipped hedges in United Arab Emirates, drawing connections with the French baroque château gardens. This merging of ideas is represented in a contemporary responsive design created a sustainable, cool and protected micro climate for users and a dynamic kaleidoscope of planting and patterned paving on the ground and viewed from the surrounding towers.

The Public Realm has been designed so that these future developments can be integrated into the landscape scheme. The podium landscape as a whole has been designed as one large plaza space, with each of the areas having a different character and function.

Sculptural mounds provide micro-climate environments as wind protection and cooling to the local surroundings. They also add a spatial intimacy, framing outdoor rooms, which mitigate the impact of the mega-scale skyscrapers in the site.

The structure of the square uses large constructed vegetated mounds that orchestrate outdoor rooms to shelter pedestrians from the Shamal, a strong north-westerly wind blowing over Persian Gulf and to provide intimate spaces amongst the towering buildings. Linking the mounds together, the decorative pattern like that of a traditional rug, weaves through the square.

To soothe people from the heat, water features are incorporated into long stone benches that wrap the mounds, providing playful and tactile experience. The surface texture is finished with ornate grooves creating a dynamic rippling effect. In order to maximise this limited resource, and reduce evaporation, the water is contained in narrow Falaj like channels as used in ancient irrigation system found throughout the Middle East. At night, the benches come to life with integrated lighting at the base that silhouettes the mounds and highlights the polished surfaces.

Innovative sustainable design has been instrumental in the project which has been awarded a LEED Gold certification. The steep angulated mounds contribute 1.45 times more green space than level planters and water consumption is reduced due to the vertical planting maximising 100% irrigation moisture.

The information gathered during the pedestrian, vehicular, and program site studies has been used to inform the landscape design strategy. The straight line pedestrian linkages and vehicular movements are used to structure the public realm and the design concepts have been used to infill the public realm structure.

Location: Abu Dhabi, UAE
Client: Mubadala Development Company
Architect: Goettsch Partners and Gensler Architects
Engineer: Oger International
Size: 2.6 Hectares
Status: Completed 2012
Environmental Rating: LEED Gold CS
Design Team: Martha Schwartz, Peter Piet, Matthew Getch, Nigel Koch, Christabel Lee, Thomas Griffiths, Liangjun Zhou, Rebecca Orr, Marti Fooks, Emily Lin, Christine Wahba, Hung-Hao Teng, Thomas Sudhoff

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features teardrop-shaped landscaping appeared first on Dezeen.

This garden, filled with a maze of grey brick arches interspersed with willow trees, has been completed by Martha Schwartz Partners as part of the 2011 Xi’an International Horticultural Expo currently taking place in China.

Master Designer’s Garden Plot 6 is one of nine gardens designed under the theme ‘the harmonious co-existence of nature and the city’.

The impression of endless pathways and arches is created by mirrors fixed to the brick walls, which on finding the dark exit corridor are revealed to be one-way glass, allowing a view back to those still lost in the maze.

Over 1,000 small bronze bells hang from the branches of the willow trees, which chime in the breeze.

Photographs 1-3 are by MSP. Photographs 4-11 are by Gen Wang. Photograph 12 is by Jake Walker.

More stories about the 2011 Xi’an Expo on Dezeen »
More projects by Martha Schwartz Partners on Dezeen »

The following information is from the architects:

Xi’An International Horticulture Exhibition Master Designer’s Garden Plot 6

Xi’An, China

Completion: 2011
Size: 900 sqm

MSP was one of nine international landscape design firms to be invited to design a small garden installation on the theme of “the harmonious co-existence of nature and the city” at the 2011 International Horticulture Exhibition in Xi’An, China. The garden will be seen by up to 12 million people between April and October 2011 and may by left permanently as part of the legacy strategy for long-term development of the site. This project is commissioned by Xi’an International Horticultural Exposition Organizing Committee. The owner’s brief specified that the designer should consider the limitations of local building materials and methods, and that the garden should be accessible to the Chinese point of view. Plot 6 measures about 30 meters square on a flat site.

Materials

The garden is composed mainly of only four elements: traditional grey brick walls and paving, willow trees, mirrors, and bronze bells. The exit corridors are covered with a flat steel and rubber membrane roofing system.

Concept: An Endless City

The theme of this installation is “City and Nature”. It is a simple theme that allows many interpretations. The bottom half of the garden is made of brick and is a maze of hallways and corridors. The city has a roof of green.

The “city” is entirely walled by simple, 3 meter high brick walls that seem to have no entrance. One enters the “city” through two ends of an open hallway created by a blank but totally mirrored wall facing a façade of 5 archways. These archways penetrate 1.5 meter thick walls and connected to a series of corridors. The numbers of possible archways to move through increase as one begins to walk through the space, creating a situation where people must begin to choose where to go and what route to try – an endless choice of routes through the maze. At the same time, no one quite knows where they are going and what to expect. It creates an experience of fun, discovery and perhaps some anxiety.

These thick archways lead to perpendicular hallways, none of which are parallel, resulting in a strange dislocation and signalling that things are not quite normal in this environment. The hallways are all mirrored at their ends creating a doubling of these spaces and corridors that bend and sometimes seem to go into infinity. As one goes through the doorways and hallways, some of them lead to “dead-end” rooms that are completely mirrored spaces and immediately remove you from the bricked environment. If one continues deeper into the maze, you come to a mysterious grove of willows, an illusion created by a 3-sided room with mirrored walls that endlessly reflect the willow grove to create a sense of endless forest.

As one starts to go down the exit corridors, it is only then that the real surprise of this garden is revealed. The mirrored surfaces are all 1-way mirrors allowing the people in the corridors to watch all the people moving through the maze and in the mirrored rooms. The viewers are able to watch the others perform without the people in the maze knowing. This arrangement provides endless entertainments, quite like the currently popular “reality” TV shows, and allows the viewers a vicarious view to performances and amusement thanks to the people who are performing completely oblivious to the fact that they are being watched. The only thing that is more amusing than looking at ourselves, is watching others when they don’t know they are being watched! The corridors are a “fun-house” where people laugh and photograph the performance in the maze from the sides.

At each end of the transverse corridors are mirrored walls which create an illusion of infinite space. As one penetrates the last of these corridors, one enters a dark, enclosed exit corridor and is confronted with a wall of one-way mirror facing a mirrored garden room with a grid of willow trees and bright green groundcover that seems to go on forever. Exiting via one of two dark covered corridors, one discovers that many of the mirrors they had encountered on the way through the transverse corridors are actually one-way mirrors, through which they can observe others from the hidden dark corridor.

The combination of living willow and solid grey walls is an expression of the harmonious co-existence of nature and city. The garden is a minimalist work of contemporary land art that speaks to the antiquity and timelessness of China, the flexibility and durability of its culture and people. It is Ying and Yang, light and heavy, dynamic and eternal, masculine and feminine. It is rich by its own simplicity. Everybody can sense it in their own way.

Project Team

Principal Design Director: Martha Schwartz
Project Manager: Don Sharp
Project Designers: Liangjun Zhou, Mattia Gambardella, Chris Wong, Tao Jiang
Associated Team: Professor Wang / Atelier DYJG

See also:

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Square by Martha Schwartz Partners	Garden by Groves-Raines Architects	Garden by West 8