The design is a result of collaboration between an international practice Asensio_Mah and students from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. It welcomes the visitors of Reford Garden Metis International Garden Festival, framing the view of the Festival’s entry sequence. It revisits the garden wall, giving it a modern expression.

It assumes the form of angled panel structure, designed more as a dynamic sculpture than as a conventional wall, intended to separate two distinct spaces. With that in mind, the authors decided to change the wall’s basic function and give it a new purpose. The wall is gradually transformed from a seating structure to ground plane, acting as an interactive site. Its framework holds together a volume of moss as it meanders at the entry of the gardens. The honeycomb structure is embedded with experimental moss surfaces, creating a vertically positioned vegetation strip, with different orientation and establishing various microclimates.

Thanks to the university’s digital fabrication facilities, a majority of the construction components to be produced before reaching the site. After rapid assembly, a moss garden extending beyond the segmented unit was planted.

The wall, a symbol that has been a consistent expressive element within the history of gardening, is turned into a surface that produces new associations and gestures through computational design.

Leave a Reply