Being placed in a site removed for the urban condition left us in a position to generate a philosophy about nature and context, and what it means to design a center focused about it. Monuments To Nature aims to distill the elements, and their sensory experiences.
There are three monuments, the tower which focuses on air, utilizing vision. Here you can bird watch in the environment of the bird, at the tree canopy level. The second monument is the land element. Here you have your surroundings blocked off so you’re focused only on what is inside, and what you’re allowed to see outside. It’s designed around an ancient rock, which you can only see, not touch from above. There are opportunities to look out, but you can only see the ground in front of your feet, forcing you to experience the dynamism of the simple things in front of you. The third and final monument is the water monument. Here the water flows onto it and you can interact with the water of the Hudson River upstream. There is also a water wall in which it flows over and cascades down into the lower level.
The monuments are permanent and meant to last forever and eventually be overgrown by nature, whilst the only “architecture” on the site is made from Timber and Polycarbonate. These materials are more temporary and will eventually wear away leaving a slab. The symbolic geometries of the concrete left over will encapsulate the signification of the monuments and their relationships to one another.