The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis was recently expanded by Herzog & de Meuron. In connection with this expansion there was to be a garden, where artists might possibly come to work. The steeply sloping ground, covers three hectares. The content of the future garden was found by observing the Minnesota landscape.

In winter, the snow highlights the geometric structure of the Minnesota landscape, which is characteristic of nearly all of the American territory, for the Jeffersonian grid organizes almost every state. At irregular intervals, this checkerboard runs up against geographical elements—slopes that cannot be farmed and built upon—yielding to forests or rivers. In places the forests open onto very unusual linear glades, and this series of solids and voids suggested a very interesting type of space for the Walker Art Center garden.

The garden could thus be conceived as the miniature transposition of this landscape, with the grid, denser here, at play with topographical elements.

As in the museum, the route plays a very important role. Because the ground is sloped, a continuous ramp was necessary so that everyone could have access. This ramp was determined by the grid, but sometimes, because the slope led it there, the route followed a curve, which again joined up with a line, and so on. Thus there was a return to the logic that has determined the construction of the American landscape in the very form of the route. The glades are defined by the grid, with the steepest slopes planted with screens of trees. Thus the ramp crosses a glade, then runs along the edge of a micro forest, goes into it, and comes out in open air, creating very diversified arrangements. Despite the small size, the garden multiplies the spatial experiences and the very number of spaces encountered. In terms of structure, this allée does not evoke any familiar path or route. It makes perceptible the geography on which we walk. Its dimensions vary continually in terms of width, sometimes shrinking to a very narrow passageway or at other times, by contrast, suddenly widening, spilling into the space of a glade, like a large boulder.

This landscape is organized in successive planes with great fluidity; the systems of transparency permitted by the curtains of trees allow the eye to make out, behind one glade, the presence of another gap.

The coherence of the space is thus woven by the system of paths, voids, and solids, by the material of the forested area and that of the ground, with the whole designed down to the smallest detail.

A portion of the project was completed, as were several prototypes. The heart of the garden is awaiting the demolition of the old theater. With the support of museum curator Kathy Halbreich (later appointed to the newly created position of associate director at the MoMA) and also of the architects, the project was an opportunity to do extremely advanced studies, which, with some interruptions, extended over five years.

The garden is an organism with a basic complexity in the sense that it is the product of the transposition of multiple layers making up a living landscape, observed at a larger scale.