The new under-over bridge corridor linking the two halves of the Royal Academy has revealed something I never saw before, just a glimpse from high windows. Hello, courtyard garden, porous paving, interstitial greenspace:
Is it staff only? or another bit of the RA that's accessible to the member's only spaces squirrelled away behind haughty volunteer attendants and Tracey Emin neons?
A closer look at that grass/block arrangement
This, famously, is not supposed to be possible. With the inexorability of entropy, the grass roots multiply, disarranging the blocks, which rock, lift, lose their regularity, crack and pop. What are they doing? Is there a secret matrix made of something flexible and non-decaying, like an architectural plastic? Or it it just quite new?
Here, take another look at the bizarre tree canopy at the far end:
The trees - mutable and forgiving London Planes, by the looks of it - have had their three dimensionality stripped from them, constrained and restrained into brushstroke vertical trunks and a soft pastel-scribble of flattened canopy, barely a foot deep, practically a green ceiling. Two chairs look out across this remarkable and possibly evanescent space.
It's difficult to do this with trees long term.
From the looks of it, it's a work in progress. Maybe we'll see it opened to the public?
Or maybe, just as gardens sometimes have an artist in residence, the bulk of their work never visible or shown, perhaps this space belongs to a gardener in residence. If so, they're not going to care about how that blocked lawn will be maintained or whether the trees will start to roll and splay like drunken party guests, as the curious formality of this interstitial courtyard garden will be swept away by the urgent vision of the next art gardener.
There's nothing on their website about this space now (I found this on the plans, but there may have been drift) so it's just a tiny slice for now; until the next time I pass that high window.
Is it staff only? or another bit of the RA that's accessible to the member's only spaces squirrelled away behind haughty volunteer attendants and Tracey Emin neons?
A closer look at that grass/block arrangement
This, famously, is not supposed to be possible. With the inexorability of entropy, the grass roots multiply, disarranging the blocks, which rock, lift, lose their regularity, crack and pop. What are they doing? Is there a secret matrix made of something flexible and non-decaying, like an architectural plastic? Or it it just quite new?
Here, take another look at the bizarre tree canopy at the far end:
The trees - mutable and forgiving London Planes, by the looks of it - have had their three dimensionality stripped from them, constrained and restrained into brushstroke vertical trunks and a soft pastel-scribble of flattened canopy, barely a foot deep, practically a green ceiling. Two chairs look out across this remarkable and possibly evanescent space.
It's difficult to do this with trees long term.
From the looks of it, it's a work in progress. Maybe we'll see it opened to the public?
Or maybe, just as gardens sometimes have an artist in residence, the bulk of their work never visible or shown, perhaps this space belongs to a gardener in residence. If so, they're not going to care about how that blocked lawn will be maintained or whether the trees will start to roll and splay like drunken party guests, as the curious formality of this interstitial courtyard garden will be swept away by the urgent vision of the next art gardener.
There's nothing on their website about this space now (I found this on the plans, but there may have been drift) so it's just a tiny slice for now; until the next time I pass that high window.
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