As part of our design module we have been tasked to put together a group design for Chaumont Sur Loire garden festival competition, the theme being 'Enchanted'.
Our design process started by mind-mapping all the the words and ideas that we associated with the word 'enchanted'. From here we produced a initial design which explored The Kraken - legendary enormous sea monster, said to be a giant squid which lurked beneath the decks of ships waiting to pull down and feast on anyone on board. And contemplation point of 'what is the greatest story ever told?', your own story.
We combined both of these ideas creating a garden with a huge squid flopped across the space, each tentacle representing the eight stages of life; birth, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, parenthood, old age, death and finally the legacy left behind. Each tentacle would be an immersive experience transporting visitors to each stage of life. The head of the Kraken was an end point of the journey, a place to look across the design and planting of the grounds embodying the legacy we leave behind.
Below is a model created by Harriet (a member of our group) outlining how the garden may look, constructed of foil and paint.
Once we had scaled the feature of the kraken to the site we came to the conclusion that having the whole of the Kraken may have drowned the planting which we knew we wanted to be a focal point.
We then redesigned the space to make our narrative stronger whilst simultaneously keeping the original conceptual ideas strong. This guided us to decide that having one tentacle with a tunnels which symbolised the now 5 main stages of life; birth, childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age. We continued the idea of legacy overlooking the garden and enabled people to stand on the point of the tentacle.
We introduced a stream which weaves with the path as a sign of reflection of ones self throughout life. We incorporated earth mounds which hid the true path and new dead ends to represent decision making, chance, luck and the feeling of being lost. Using planting to elude the five stages of life with their traditional deeper meanings, for example roses- true love, lilies - purity.
Our design is likely to evolve as we continue with the design process, but for now this is what we will be working on!
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