ST. LEONARD'S GARDENS

This is going to be a very busy week: the deadline for the submission of the masterplan proposals is approaching and I have started to sketch some ideas down for my site. I started by making a model of the topography of the park based on a map with the contour levels. It has helped me a lot to visualise the space I have to design.



Then I started to do a little bit of brainstorming to find a good concept for my design proposal: the park was originally a quarry and has been excavated to provide sandstone for the whole town. Therefore, I began to think about ideas and words associated with quarries...alien landscape, rough edges, powerful, sinister, grand scale, scaring the landscape, dust, rubble, noisy, busy, angular shapes, waterlogged pools, stage, baron, brutal.....
I did some research on quarries on the internet to collect a visual palette and some ideas, I found some stunning photographs:











I thought I would like to bring the sanstone banks back to the surface and make locals more aware of the past of the site, quarries look really powerful and stunning. Then Emma recommended me an interesting website:
http://learningstone.org/
It's the Portland Trust which was created years ago on the island where Portland stone used to be estracted. Now the quarries are closed and locals are invited to join workshop labs with artists and masons who explain them how to carve the local stone to make sculptures. I thought it was a brilliant idea and that I could turn my site into a sculpture quarry park too!
Here are some sketches I have produced on my sketchbook so far: