|
Scott
W. Wylie, Designer Springfield, Oregon (541) 741-8385 Email: wylieaerie@att.net |
|
|
|
|
Entrance Plaza Compass Rose
Entrance Plaza
Crossing & Commons
Crossing Medallion
Fountain
Court
|
Entrance Plaza, Commons, and Fountain
Court for Fire and Emergency Services Headquarters, Eugene, Oregon
Through Eugene’s Public Art Program, I was commissioned to design a sequence of realms I term "art paving". The task given me, here, was to invite the public in, at the street entrance of the Headquarters Building, and draw them through to the courtyard fountain. I immediately saw that every part of this "path" was an important place, so I developed a continuous procession of places. The Headquarter’s street entrance is the main entrance to the entire FireEMS campus, so I developed an Entrance Plaza to set the tone. The Entrance Plaza is circular and is dominated by a large compass rose, a universal symbol of Reliability. The materials and colors suggest Reliability’s attending qualities... permanence, compassion, the venerable. The Rose’s visual layering links with the layered structure of the stone cascade fountain. Unexpectedly, somewhat mysterious round tiles ring the Plaza then mark the way into the Headquarters. Inside is a pair of arches that distinguishes the crossroads to all parts of the Headquarters. Centered in the crossing, a brick medallion with a highly-glazed stoneware star confers richness, warmth, and focus to a pair of concentric rings incised in the floor’s patina. These rings reverberate in the arches. Honey-colored stained and tinted floors in the crossing and other "art paving" regions of the Headquarters contrast with the maroon floors of the rest of the building’s circulation. This change creates a "carpet", increasing a sense of place for the Foyer, Crossing, and Commons. The Commons, especially, was not well-defined as a place; I wished to increase its importance as a place designed for relaxation and breaking from business and class. The now-familiar round tiles... wildly glazed circles created in the spirit of relaxation, playfully reappear in shiny, diapered patterns in the processional regions of the Commons floor. Broad glass curtain walls at the courtyard side of the Commons fully reveal the fountain and the campus beyond. In the Courtyard, the basalt slate fountain, (by artist Tom Griffin), is a large, radially-stacked structure of basalt-slate slabs that break up the water, (coming out of the top of a central stem), into thousands of small, splashing rivers. These rivulets, which flow away in all directions from the base of the stone formation, cascade into a ring-shaped basin. It seemed natural to, as much as possible, create a circular courtyard concentric to the fountain. The pavement designs and patterns I called are both radial, like the sun’s energy, and concentric, like water rings from a cast stone. A short distance from the fountain basin I introduced stepped benches which "telescope-up" from one of the pavement rings..... in stepped sitting, I thought of the many kinds of sitting we do... squatting-sitting, chair-sitting, foot-dangling-sitting.... The brick colors used in the pavement, for the most part, contrast with the building masonry, and coordinate with the fountain stone colors.... "amplifying" the fountain’s presence. The layout structure and color distribution in the broad principal brick ring create a mirrored, abstract rendition of the jagged, outreaching fountain stones. Again, formally-yet-randomly-arranged circular tiles, this time joined by small black, glazed triangles, appear in the brick ring.... the colors, patterns, and textures create climaxes. These designs interplay with a long, richly-detailed, simply-formed brick sitting wall that forms an amphitheater. The wall is a warm spot to rest. |
|
|
|
|
Fountain Court Brick Ring
|
Fountain Court Amphitheatre
|
