Client: Jay Paul Company and the City of Sunnyvale, Arts Commission
Location: Sunnyvale , CA, United States
Completion date: 2020
Artwork budget: $3,000,000
Project Team
Artist, Landscape Architect
Cliff Garten
Cliff Garten Studio
Project Manager/ Designer
Matt Gilio-Tenan
Cliff Garten Studio
Fabricator
Metal Arts Foundry
Metal Arts Foundry
Landscape Architect of Record
DES Architects + Engineers
DES Architects + Engineers
Overview
Suturis is a landscape sculpture and linear park. Landscape function and art conjoin into a seamless pedestrian experience that elevates the banality of a parking lot into a memorable experience of a public garden, equally composed of landscape and sculpture. Three of these linear parks join the Facebook and Amazon Campus to the surrounding public realm of Sunnyvale, CA, in the unlikely shadow of corporate parking areas. Landform, planting and sculpture are joined in a series of overlapping lines, planes and forms that leverage the % for art project for the corporate campus into a landscape sculpture. Its carefully choreographed planting plan provides a balance of seasonal plant performance, color, shade, habitat, and carbon sequestration within what would have been the heat sink of the parking area. Pre-cast sculptural seating is made from 80% recycled, cast concrete. A permeable surface of decomposed granite, crushed rock and concrete paths form a linear composition on the ground plane creating a richly layered pattern that directs passage. The strong horizontal aspect of the sculpture is countered by the vertical movement of a filigree of laser-cut stainless-steel entry screens joined by a grove of sycamore, compositionally integrated with the paving and seating pattern.
Goals
Suturis is a landscape sculpture whose goal is to seamlessly integrate sculpture and landscape into a single statement. The path of our bodies through the park is directed by the motions of the objects on the ground plane and by the vertical sculptures that are scaled to and a part of the landscape. One is held by the overlapping aspects of the landscape and the sculpture in a place created by a dialogue between the aesthetics and function. Linking landscape and sculpture establishes a seamless experience, one that we don’t normally encounter in a public place. When concrete, crushed rock, decomposed granite, and earthworks, come together on the ground plane in a specific pattern, we are given notice of the cadence of our step. When concrete twists off of the ground into an elegant cast bench or an improbable plane of a lacey pattern of stainless steel, lifting to the sky we are asked to see an enhanced image of light and shadow. The linear site has been activated through the ground plane, paving, berms, planting, seating and entry sculptures so that they are stitched to together into a landscape sculpture, thus the Latin for stitches, Suturis.