“The Emerald Necklace is a dynamic and evolving work of art. In Boston, Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903) and his collaborators applied their skill, creativity, and imagination to sculpt waterways and landscapes that inspire, calm, and uplift in a growing 19th-century city. Today, Japanese artist Fujiko Nakaya (born 1933) continues this legacy. Her climate-responsive fog sculptures placed throughout the Emerald Necklace appear natural but are carefully crafted, just like Olmsted’s parks. Though separated by over a century, Nakaya and Olmsted’s ambitious work with water both illuminate the relationships between the natural and artificial. Olmsted was a master of perceiving and highlighting the “genius of place” - a landscape’s many individual elements that together create a unique experience of a site. Likewise, Nakaya’s site-specific fog sculptures vividly manifest both landscapes’ and weather’s unseen forces.”

Excerpt from FogxFLO Exhibition curated by Jen Mergel

Concept

The project takes place inside The  Shattuck Visitor Center ( Henry Hobson Richardson) where Ann Beha Architects recently renovated the interior to set up the Emerald Necklace Conservancy’s offices.The challenge we faced is to take the first step into converting the private office space into a temporary gallery space without moving a single wall, nesting our design within the historical and the modern.The organizing force for the project is a liner of interconnected panels that create a new “offset” from the existing layout. Inspired by Olmsted and Nakaya’s work, the exhibit is vibrant and immersive. Therefore the design plays with a “scalloped” panel module to help organize the content and create different experiences. When the liner passes by a window in reacts to it revealing the layers within through a series of cutouts.

Materials

The exhibition armature is made of CNC’d plywood pieces that fit together. We utilized low-grade plywood for the skeleton and poplar for the milled transitions.  We also used Kerfcore panels, a type of bendable MDF, to create the curved surfaces. The milled poplar transitions are designed to resolve the seams between curved panels, providing durability with a seamless effect.

Process

This is a second design-build project for BOS|UA. The schedule was extremely tight, as well as the budget,. The ability to flow from design to pricing and fabrication allows us to provide a full service that minimizes delays and mistakes.We collaborated with MTWTF for initial design concepts and the Full Exhibition layout & Logo. Kyle Barker from Extra Work created the Mini Exhibition Layout.