“Line Garden” Featured in International Garden Festival Second Year in a Row
A series of canopied spaces outlined with commercial barrier tape, "Line Garden" by Julia Jamrozik and Coryn Kempster invites visitors inside to experience a common material in a new way. Photo by Coryn Kempster
By Lisa Gagnon
Published September 10, 2015 This content is archived.
“Line Garden,” a playful landscape of commercial barrier tape designed by School of Architecture and Planning Assistant Professor of Architecture Julia Jamrozik and design partner Coryn Kempster, adjunct professor of architecture, is again featured in the International Garden Festival of Les Jardin de Métis (also known as Reford Gardens).
Julia Jamrozik and Coryn Kempster have been collaborating since 2003, “endeavoring to create objects, spaces and situations that interrupt the ordinary in a critically engaging and playful way.”
In “Line Garden,” Jamrozik and Kempster form a geometric zone using tightly spaced parallel lines of stretched commercial barrier tape. While such tape most often signifies inaccessibility – e.g., cordoning off construction zones or crime scenes – “Line Garden” invites visitors inside to experience the common material in a new way, with its bright colors, transparency and playful motion in the wind.
“Drawing on the formal language of historical garden design and the contemporary means of mass produced safety and construction materials, the project is a strong graphic intervention that aims to produce an abstract field,” Jamrozik and Kempster explain in their project narrative. “The installation introduces ordered man-made elements into the cultivated natural environment of the Reford Gardens. Through this juxtaposition, a dialogue between the two spheres is created based on the shared theme of protection and necessary safe-guarding, while questioning the definition of what is truly natural.”
"Voids" in the installation allow visitors to relax under the canopies in lounge chairs designed by Jamrozik and Kempster. Photo by Louise Tanguay
The International Garden Festival, the most important event of its kind in North America, offers an experimental forum for contemporary gardens and design and serves as a launching pad for participating designers from a host of disciplines including visual arts, landscape design and architecture.
After participating in the exhibition in 2014, Jamrozik and Kempster were asked to return in 2015 with an evolution of their playful garden installation featuring a new color scheme and the addition of three canopy elements.
Jamrozik and Kempster have been collaborating since 2003, “endeavoring to create objects, spaces and situations that interrupt the ordinary in a critically engaging and playful way.” At the School of Architecture and Planning, Julia Jamrozik’s research focuses on public space, public buildings and the role both playfulness and play can have in shaping these environments.
Located in Grand-Métis, the Reford Gardens are a national historic site in Canada situated on the banks of the St. Lawrence and Mitis rivers. This year’s exhibition runs through September 27th.