HORTUS CONCLUSUS - CENTRE POMPIDOU

PARIS, FRANCE (1989)

Hortus Conclusus creates a quiet, secluded sanctuary a contained or-chard for dining in the center of a dense metropolis. As part of an exhibition on gardens, the museum's roof terrace is transformed into a temporal realm of mystery and delight. Enveloped in mist that animates its forms with shifting light and shadow, a garden rises from the hard surface of the terrace at the end of a serpentine path. Vertical mirrors veiled by trellis panels covered with ivy and arranged in a grid alternate with open space to define the garden's perimeter wall, giving the effect of a forest of infinite depth and delineating se-mi-enclosed private dining spaces. Above each trellis tower, a gold-plated weather vane gleams, simulating bird songs when the wind blows and calling to mind the expanse of nature beyond the city. Crisply pruned hedges abut the panels to evoke the boundaries of a fortified city forbidding from without, protecting from within.

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