Last year, the San Francisco Botanical Garden in Golden Gate Park held a design competition, calling for entries for a new installation to replace the center fountain. The mission: design a solution that effectively communicates the historical significance of Gondwana in relation to the evolution and current horticultural communities of the Southern Hemisphere.
Gondwana is the name the 200 million year old supercontinent that eventually broke apart to include most of the landmasses in today’s southern hemisphere, including Antarctica, South America, Africa, Madagascar, Australia-New Guinea, and New Zealand.
The competition received 89 entries and late last year, they named the winners: Michael Overby and Emma Fuller. Their design, pictured below, is a “Gondwana Stonehenge” of sorts, with tall pillars that represent the six different land masses that once made up the supercontinent.
The designers had several objectives to meet, including making the space educational, beautiful and a nice respite within the garden that visitors could enjoy. Each pillar in the cirle will be imprinted with the land mass in its modern configuration and flowering plants specific to each will be set into the shelves of the pillars. There will also be stone benches placed throughout.
Overby and Fuller were interviewed for the SF Botanical Garden podcast which you can listen to below. In the interview, they said they hope that people will see this project as something that is a small contribution to the already beautiful gardens.
[audio:http://sfbotanicalgarden.org/podcasts/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Gondwana-Circle-Design-Competition-Winners.mp3]While the design has been decided upon, the Botanical Garden still needs to raise funds to construct the new Gondwana Circle. According to their contest submission, Overby and Fuller estimate that costs could run between $149,000 to $200,000.
Let’s hope that gets raised soon – this will be a great addition to the garden.
Sarah B.
