As a permanently designed art and landscape space in Philadelphia, »Calder Gardens« is dedicated to the work of American sculptor Alexander Calder (1898—1976) and presents a rotating installation of works from his approximately 50-year oeuvre. Initiated by the Calder Foundation in collaboration with the Barnes Foundation and realized by the Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron and landscape designer Piet Oudolf, a spatially composed experience was created, where sculpture, architecture, and landscape meet on equal terms.
Architecture by Herzog & de Meuron
The architecture of »Calder Gardens« was designed by the Swiss firm Herzog & de Meuron, known for its context-sensitive cultural buildings. The renowned architectural practice keeps the design restrained, framing the art in a calm, carefully structured setting. Partially embedded in the ground, the structure develops along the property in horizontal sequences.
The architecture remains deliberately low and opens up to the landscape, rather than separating itself from it. In response to the kinetic and static quality of Calder’s sculptures, a sequence of spatial situations emerges, characterized by differently proportioned rooms, varying ceiling heights, and strategically placed daylight openings. Materials and surfaces are subtly chosen, directing focus to the form, movement, and scale of the sometimes larger-than-life sculptures.
Landscape Design by Piet Oudolf
Piet Oudolf, one of the most influential landscape designers of our time, was entrusted with the design of the landscape for »Calder Gardens«. His concept is based on a multi-layered planting of perennials, grasses, and woody plants, used as compositional elements that change with the rhythm of the seasons. Movement—one of the central principles of Alexander Calder’s mobiles—is created here by wind, light, growth, and change.
Oudolf’s overall overview of the planting concept for the «Calder Gardens» site, with color coding for plant selection as a reference; the drawing shows various planting concepts for the different areas of the landscape and their connection to each other.
Like Calder’s sculptures, which remain in a constant, never identical state due to air movement, gravity, and balance, the landscape is also designed as a dynamic system. More than 250 plant species form a living structure in which processes of becoming, passing, and renewal become visible. Calder’s statement »The universe is real, but you can’t see it. You have to imagine it.« can be read in this context as a unifying idea: perception is active and only unfolds in the interplay of space, time, and imagination.
Calder in his Roxbury studio, 1941.
In the garden spaces, designed as open structures, the sculptures do not appear as isolated objects, but as integral components of a changing environment. Wind, light, and vegetation continuously influence their perception and echo Calder’s interest in movement and change; Oudolf expands the environment with his intervention—as in a successful collaboration—to an additional dimension.
A Quiet System
»Calder Gardens« largely foregoes explanatory texts or traditional mediation formats, focusing instead on direct experience. The project positions itself neither as a sculpture park nor as an exhibition house, but as a coherent ensemble of space, design, landscape, and art, where Calder’s work is rethought both spatially and conceptually. In doing so, »Calder Gardens« sets a new standard for dealing with modern sculpture in public and semi-public spaces. Architecture and landscape do not compete with the art, but form an environment specifically tailored to the work—a place where design has a structural impact and allows art to speak in its own way. [Ed.]
