2018 Honor Award, American Society of Landscape Architects
Take a tour through a magical garden with the designer, Sven-Ingvar Andersson, as guide. Hear the stories behind the garden’s many rooms. Watch the garden change through seasons and years. Follow the ideas that drive the form. The film begins with the designer’s dream of a green den, a garden with many rooms. It continues with shrubs that decide to become birds, and ends in transformation. “My garden develops, culminates, tires, and deteriorates in step with me,” reflects the designer. “The garden also shows life’s natural vitality and the sure way to the peace of death, which makes way for new life.”
Marnas: A Journey Through Space, Time and Ideas is a website and archive, as well as a film. Visitors to the website encounter clips from the film in a self-guided tour as they wander through the virtual garden.
The film premiered at the Royal Academy of Arts in Copenhagen and has been viewed by thousands of visitors to www.marnasgarden.com.
Duration: 20 minutes
“Marnasgarden.com models the transformative power of the digital humanities as a tool for understanding landscapes across space and time. Image, text, and sound take us on an exquisite journey that cuts to the heart of dilemmas driving twenty-first century practice – given the dynamic nature of landscapes, how do we design for inevitable adaptation? How do we preserve that which must necessarily change? Anne Spirn’s masterful work connects points in time, liking theory and practice in a provocative living expression that breaks new ground in landscape architecture research.” Phoebe Lickwar, FORGE