Friday, August 27, 2010

A Garden of Books in a Forest of Trees


Behold the artwork of designers Thilo Folkerts and Rodney LaTourelle.

From a story about the garden in Arch Daily...

The Jardin de la Connaissance is a temporary garden in a forested area involving approximately 40,000 books, multi-coloured wooden plates and several varieties of mushrooms.

In reference to the festival’s theme of paradise, there are exposed the tree (of knowledge) as the central semiotic theme of the paradisiacal garden. Rather than reopening a way through the proverbial enclosures, the design team is interested in its manifold textures. From the single tree of knowledge they have gone to the many of the forest; from one truth to the plenitude of multimedia and the overwhelming world of information. The ‘Garden of Cognition’ does not illustrate a ‘return to nature’ or attempt a ‘biblical’ reconciliation, but its intention is to provide a platform to experience and frame the forest of the many in a unique and compelling way. The garden engages the mythical relation between knowledge and nature integral to the concept of ‘paradise’. By using books as material in the construction of the garden, they confront these instruments of knowledge with the temporality of nature. And by exposing these fragile and supposedly timeless materials to transformation and disintegration, they also invite an emotional involvement of the visitor. The book assemblages establish a framework amidst the forest that embodies a variety of experiential activities. The Jardin de la Connaissance becomes a sensual reading room, a library, an information platform, a dynamic realm of knowledge.

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