© Martin Bond
The architecture studio Talmon Biran, has designed “AROUND ABOUT,” one of the winning entries in the 2015 edition of the International Garden Festival at the Jardin de Metis in Quebec, Canada.
© Louise Tanguary
The designer’s description
AROUND ABOUT is a ‘dry Landscape’ installation inspired from the concept of Japanese Zen gardens. A set of large roundabouts is to be placed inside a field of gravel.
© Louise Tanguary
These roundabouts, whose design is inspired from agricultural machinery, include tines below their bottom beam which rakes the gravel in circular patterns as the roundabout spins.
© Martin Bond
The visitors are active participants in the composition of the garden and its constant rearrangement.
© Martin Bond
In contrast to the typical Zen garden, which is usually planned to be seen from the outside of the garden, AROUND ABOUT is seen, created and experienced from the inside, through a joyful and playful activity.
© Martin Bond
The proposal acts on the tension between order and disorder. The entire garden works in harmony, as a mechanism whose components are in precise proportion and relation to one another.
© Martin Bond
As visitors walk away from the roundabouts, their footsteps violate the orderly pattern of the gravel. Once they get back on the roundabouts and spin them, the garden returns to order.
