Annmarie Garden Visitors Center & Sculpture Garden

Solomons, Maryland, USA, 2003

This combination of master plan and visitors pavilion is designed for a thirty-five acre sculpture garden located on an island in the Chesapeake Bay. The purpose is to provide an exhibition environment for outdoor art works and integrate a forested landscape. The concept is also designed as a matrix of spaces that will inspire artists to add site-specific works in the future. This plan also includes a series of tree-lined arcades and meadow passageways. These hallway-like processionals are the result of orchestrated planting and a clearing away of selected trees. The Visitors Pavilion, inserted as an axial extension of one of the forest arcades, is designed to accommodate indoor exhibits, a lecture hall, library, and executive offices. Various collections of branches, gathered from surrounding trees, are incorporated as an intrinsic part of the exterior walls. This “horizontal forest” effect is achieved by suspending the branches between a double layer of exterior glass and interior metal scrim partitions.