Aim

To create a garden between faculty buildings at Sheffield University, able to soften the space and bring students from different disciplines together.

The Greening of Sheffield initiative inspired by Professor Nigel Dunnett was also a driver in the development of our ideas.

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CONCEPT

FEEDING A GARDEN THAT GROWS

As arts and science buildings face each other across the site, we imagined a shared garden as the creative flowering produced by a pooling of artistic and scientific ways of thinking.

Twin paths lead into the centre in the form of giant ladles that reference Sheffield’s cutlery-making tradition. Where the paths meet, word poems suggesting the artistic process and the scientific method are set into the floor. The ladles appear to pour students into the garden, creating ripples in the landform that spread outwards, eating into the paving.

Process

We collaborated on this job with Chris Brammall Ltd, who fabricated the ladle sculptures from galvanised steel, and Professor Nigel Dunnett of Sheffield University, who designed the planting scheme. Professor Dunnett has spearheaded a re-greening of Sheffield and we were keen for our garden to link to this wider programme.