An Industrial Wasteland Transformed
The Seattle Art Museum's new Olympic Sculpture Park opened earlier this month on the site
of a former oil-storage facility, and it's a very dramatic setting for a new, public sculpture garden.
The park itself is a huge zig-zag, sandwiched in between Elliott Bay and Western Avenue over the railroad tracks of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway and another busy thoroughfare.
The nine-acre industrial site was acquired from Unocal (now the Chevron Corp) in 1999 by the Seattle Art Museum and the Trust for Public Land with public and private funds. An additional property was added later to provide access to the shoreline.
As lead designers, the museum selected the New-York based firm Weiss/Manfredi, which integrates architecture, landscape design, art, and infrastructure. Design development for specific garden areas, along with plant selection, was completed by Charles Anderson Landscape Architecture of Seattle.
(photo: Paul Warchol)
The park begins with a modern glass and steel pavilion that links indoors and outdoors with cantilevered roofs and multi-level terraces and looks out over Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains. A 2200-foot crushed stone path then descends through an evergreen forest (The Valley), a grove of native aspen trees and three meadow landscapes to the shoreline 40 feet below. Along the way, visitors encounter modern sculptures by some of the best-known 20th-21st century artists.
"The Eagle," a monumental work by Alexander Calder, marks the halfway point in the descent. There also a huge "Typewriter Eraser" by Claes Oldenburg, a stone bench by Louise Bourgeois, and other works by Richard Serra, Anthony Caro, Pedro Reyes, and many others.
Plantings in the various park areas are designed to replicate native northwest landscapes.
The Valley is planted with Western larches (Larix occidentalis), Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) and dogwood (Cornus 'Eddie's White Wonder'), with understory plantings of salal (Gaultheria shallon), sword fern (Polystichum munitum) and snowberry (Symphoricarpos albus). Two trees found in fossilized form in Washington state - the dawn redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides) and the ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba) are also planted in this area.
The Grove is noted mainly for its 140 quaking aspens (Populus tremuloides), a tree with imposing white bark and quite a sound when the wind whips up its leaves. A carpet of flowering currant (Ribes sanguineum) and wood rose (Rosa gymnocarpa) add color in spring.
The Meadows include the native garry oak (Quercus garryana), along with grasses, bulbs, and spring flowering perennials.
Finally, the Shore is designed to include habitat for salmon recovery and extensive native plantings that will contribute to the restoration of the natural ecosystem. Shore pines (Pinus contorta var contorta) and alders (Alnus rubra) populate the landscape near the water's edge, along with dune grasses (Elymus mollis) and beach strawberry (Fragaria chiloensis).
Worth a trip!
(photo: Paul Warchol)
Comments