SEED is a proposal developed by internationally esteemed garden designer, Piet Oudolf, in collaboration with multidisciplinary team drawn from worlds of sound design, film making, philosophy, artificial intelligence and architecture.
SEED takes the form of a semi-submerged architectural pavilion inserted into a post-industrial fragment of the Copeland landscape, an abandoned quarry.
Project
- Use: Pavilion
- Status: Competition
- Location: Cumbria, UK
- Date: 2022
- https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/sep/03/lake-district-slag-heap-could-become-landmark-public-art
Team
- Garden designer: Piet Oudolf
- Filmmaker: Tom Piper
- Sound artist: Nicholas Baker
- Philosopher: Emmanuel Coccia
- Artificial intelligence artist: Lexx Bronze
- Producer: Elena Hill
PROCESS
A garden, in its purest form, is art: a place where living forms are composed through human creativity to induce a primal appreciation of what philosopher, Emmanuele Coccia calls, the universal sharing of life. Gardens heal; they heal individuals, they heal communities, and they also have the potential to heal our planet.
SEED will play host to an immersive audio-visual installation based on Piet’s emotional response to a place. The digital aspect of SEED will deconstruct an Oudolf garden, and isolate its underlying components; the sights, scents and sounds. The raw material will be audio, video and aromatic recordings of Oudolf’s response to the Cumbrian landscape.
This abstract and poetic experience will immerse the visitor within the mist nascent phases of Oudolf’s imagination. These initial seeds of media will feed an algorithm that will compose the audio and visual elements of the immersive installation in an ever changing, seasonally fluctuating and generative way.
Digital audio files of the future will not be restricted to just one playback possibility. They will be fluid, intelligent and capable of responding to external input, offering the creator and audience endless new possibilities. They won’t just play, they will perform.
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SEED will be housed in a new paviliuon. Befitting the seed theme, this pavilion will be partially subterranean such that visitors will experience the installation in isolation from the surrounding landscape. Within the pavilion courtyard will be a planned area; an encyclopaedic planting palette, designed by Oudolf, which will be akin to a botanical presentation of signature plants chosen by Oudolf.
The pavilion will be constructed from hempcrete, its components cast against the rough earth that surrounds it. Its grotto like surface will contain crevices and folds where local wild plants can seed themselves, much as they do in the drystone walls. Hempcrete is a sustainable, monolithic, breathable and insulating material, which does not require many layers of construction materials. It is supported by a structural frame and concrete retaining wall below ground level.
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