Nestled in New Canaan, Connecticut, Grace Farms is a bucolic place where art meets architecture in a natural setting of green meadows.
Designed by Japanese Pritzker Prize architects SANAA, Grace Farms is built as a series of pavilions in which you can choose to unwind, consult the art library or admire art by Beatriz Milhazes.
You can also choose to listen to performances in the most intimate of auditoriums, where Oliafur Eliasson adds to the meditative mood of the surrounding materials with his Mats for Multi-dimensional Prayers.
Olafur Eliasson, Mats for Multi-dimensional Prayers.
Olafur Eliasson, Mats for Multi-dimensional Prayers.
Come with a group and you might change the world for good…or at least try! But truly, taking in the views framed by SANAA’s modernist architecture is the real treat.
Following the gently sloping concrete river path linking the pavilions, I kept being surprised by beautiful reflections of the outside landscape on the curved glass windows.
Teresita Fernández, Double Glass River, 2015
Teresita Fernández, Double Glass River, 2015
Catching clouds inside a multitude of silvered glass cubes, Teresita Fernández achieves a glittering pixelization of the surrounding landscape and an optical atomization of its reflection.
Teresita Fernández, Double Glass River, 2015
Teresita Fernández, Double Glass River, 2015
Teresita Fernández, Double Glass River, 2015
Detail from Teresita Fernández, Double Glass River, 2015
Fully respecting the existing hill and slopes of the landscape, architecture and nature cohabit in a stunning disappearing act.
SANAA pavilions undulate, showing a fluidity reminiscent of the meanders of a water stream finding its way through its natural habitat and espousing the contours of its terrain.
Such organic quality is beautifully captured in these photographs by Thomas Demand in which the preparatory models for Grace Farms bear witness to how the entire place was architecturally conceived.
On a mission to epitomize Amazing Grace, Grace Farms certainly achieves the most natural of serenity.
Chair by Kazuyo Sejima & Ryue Nishizawa (SANAA)
Visit Grace Farms in all seasons, all info are available here. And if you think of an architecture or art lover who would enjoy it, thank you for sharing.
© 2018 Ingrid Westlake
All pictures by Ingrid Westlake, unless otherwise stated.