THE NEW KID ON THE PARKWAY

By Austin Mayer

Constructing a totally new, intimate and ever-changing encounter with the artwork of Alexander Calder on public parkland is a social, environmental and political undertaking, made possible through the support of multiple stakeholders and shaped by community feedback that reflect the values of our time. In the case of Calder Gardens, these voices include the City of Philadelphia, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the Calder Foundation, the Neubauer Family Foundation, the Lenfest Foundation, the Barnes Foundation, the Pew Foundation and many others. The openly available archive of meetings, hearings and submittals offer an opportunity to understand the space through the process of a design studio and local government.

This story begins on April 28, 2022, with the introduction of Property Bill No. 220366 during a virtual Philadelphia City Council meeting. The legislation reiterates a grand vision of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway that harkens back to an earlier time. Descriptors such as “magnificent,” “glorious” and “attractive” qualify that a lease to CP 2023, a charitable organization supporting the mission of the Barnes and construction of Calder Gardens, merits an exception from the requirements of Philadelphia Code Chapter 15-100 regarding parks and outdoor public spaces.

From here on out, the project moves forward gracefully, finding favor from the City Planning Commission, the Committee on Parks and Recreation, the Mayor’s Office, the Department of Licenses and Inspections, the Arts Commission, the Department of Streets, the Logan Square Neighborhood Association, and even the Water Department. We are witnessing a masterclass in expedience from elected and appointed decision-makers working together via Zoom.

Of all the stops listed above, one hearing stands out for its record of public comment. On September 14, 2022, Herzog & de Meuron presented a slide deck for conceptual approval to the Arts Commission, an interdisciplinary group responsible for reviewing the design and location of construction projects and artworks on City property. 

At this hearing, the Arts Commission is joined by Philadelphians,and the public voice moves to the foreground:

“The materials are very beautiful…but I’m trying to understand how the wood relates to the surrounding context.”

“I’m extremely concerned about who this is designed for…the space that it’s taking up…and who it’s excluding.”

“How will renewable energy be incorporated into the project?”

“Do we have an exact count on the number of trees that will be removed?”

“This site has a history of flooding…so I’m curious how stormwater is being handled…and whether that’s been fully resolved.”

“Philadelphia is on a major migratory pathway for birds…so even birds who don’t normally live in the city will pass through…”

“I’m just curious if any of those spaces were conceived for rotating exhibitions by artworks outside of Calder…or is it exclusively for Calder’s work?”

Questions and comments like these are always instructive for a design professional to encounter during a public hearing. This is often the moment when a project takes its own temperature, offering a glimpse of the road that lies ahead. Silence is frequently interpreted as the sound of public support. When we design, build, develop or plan, we get to intentionally and optimistically address emergent topics such as access, inclusion, resilience, resources, environment, species, energy, climate and housing. To us, they are not boxes to check or requirements to meet, but areas rich for new creative possibilities.

Calder Gardens inherits its trapezoidal site from the collision of two 20th-century urban developments: the Benjamin Franklin Parkway and the Vine Street Expressway. While the Expressway is the result of mid-century city planning efforts, the Parkway emerges from a sustained agenda advanced by the Fairmount Park Art Association beginning in the 1890s. This agenda aligns civic beauty, cultural authority, and state power. Its early form is notably austere: flat, bare, paved and leveled for the automobile.

 A century later, Calder Gardens represents the latest in a long series of infill projects along this diagonal axis of public parkland, and it is unlikely to be the last. 

I arrived on my first visit carrying my own expectations based on the planning process. At first glance, depending on where one stands, the building reads like a roadside billboard with a secret entrance. While this may be an early conceptual talking point, the parti ultimately follows another path, one less interested in irony and critique but deeply invested in the intelligence revealed through experiments in form and process. The studio prompt could have read like this: a space for a family of sculptures, a section taken through an archival photograph, a meditation chamber carved into the side of a super highway. The organization is steeped in the playful exploration of Sanborn maps, trace paper, graphite and late-night model making. Value engineering may have occurred, but it is not evident as there is great integrity between the design process and the results. The project is, at its core, existential. It is obsessed with space itself, more specifically the interstitial space created between art and architecture.

Calder’s artworks have the unique ability to appeal simultaneously to children, governments and art historians, and can be seen indoors and outdoors all over the world. The beauty of his work in this context lies in the nuanced experience of finding where the art ends and architecture begins, and vice versa. We are repeatedly reminded — and just as often forget — what we are looking at, listening to, touching, moving through orstanding still in. The transitions through the galleries are cinematic, composed of scenes, sets, characters, Nakashima furniture, beginnings, endings and dead endings. What Jacques Herzog has referred to as “no-design” architecture is a proposition that design can be a kind of compromise; and that by withholding it, architecture reveals itself.

 A client’s trust in a studio, combined with a program not required to ensure profitability, becomes a site for the kinds of spaces we encounter frequently during our education and less frequently during our professional careers. After my encounter, I came away with a new perspective. I was inspired and wanted more.

Later that night, flipping through the candid cellphone images on the Herzog & de Meuron website, it becomes clear how complex this seemingly invisible museum was to design and build. Through multitudes of models, drawings and urban studies, the design team discovered pools of space and light lying dormant beneath the earth’s surface, ready to emerge through excavation, intricate formwork, poetic use of structure and material, as well as the literal moving of an unfortunately placed water main.

Like all cultural institutions operating in the 21st century, the architecture, artworks and leadership of Calder Gardens are subject to reinterpretation with each new cycle of programming. Its vision as a platform for experimentation, collaboration and cultural dialogue, much like the native and non-native plant species in Piet Oudolf’s landscape plan, will require time for the roots to sink in. From its Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape Land Blessing led by educator Denise Bright Dove Ashton-Dunkley to commissions by musician Raven Chacon, poet Cecilia Vicuña and the Sun Ra Arkestra, Calder Gardens is beginning to articulate a new template for who appears on the Parkway and what takes place there. 

At the same time, an expanded approach to access, open doors for Philadelphia-based artists, and dialogue with places like the ICA, RAIR and Vox Populi feel within reach.

Projects like Calder Gardens are the exception rather than the norm. Many cultural proposals remain unbuilt, stalled by funding, constructability, or the difficulty of sustaining political and public support over time. Projects such as the Chinatown Stitch and the proposed African American Museum building are currently facing such challenges. What ultimately distinguishes Calder Gardens is not only that it was built, but that it navigated the dense approval process required to transform green space into concrete space. Its realization raises enduring questions about which visions advance, which do not and why. It also underscores the ongoing responsibility of art institutions to remain inclusive, accessible and responsive to the communities they serve. Calder Gardens now stands as a completed work of architecture, but its success continues to be measured not only by the quality of its design or construction, but by its ability to adapt, engage and evolve as aliving part of the city’s shared urban experience.

AUSTIN MAYER is the co-founder of Blue World Gallery, a virtual place for art and us on theinternet. He lives and works in Philadelphia.