Nestled at the base of the newly renovated Gio Ponti building, the Sensory Garden at the Denver Art Museum transforms an empty terrace into a source of life. As a place for visitors and patrons to engage with nature, the garden offers new ground for contemplation, inspiration, and art.
The garden is composed of three fields; three fragments that nestle sensory Mediterranean selections within the native landscape of the steppe biome. Not unlike the ancient gardens that used to be cultivated at the perimeter of the defense walls of a medieval castle, the Sensory Garden offers a poetic and temporal quality. The intervention is presented as a humble import: wooden crates full of soil compose the space, like a suspended terrain deposited at the base of the towering walls of the museum.
Plants are the essence of the garden, intentionally selected for their colors, textures, and fragrance to invite the hand, and to instill calm and connection. Within the central raised bed, water is presented as a precious resource; a discrete, reflective line in dialog with the architectural openings of towering walls of the building bringing in light and sky. This project was a collaboration with the Denver Botanic Gardens and the Denver Art Museum.
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