Donald M. Kendall Sculpture Gardens - Description of The Site

Description of The Site

The site, built partly on a former polo field, with the enormous, three-story headquarters building in the center, surrounded by bushes, vast lawns, streams on the east and west, gardens and bushes dispersed around the site, and a pond in the back. Parking (with separate lots for employees and visitors) is hidden behind trees, mostly on the east side. From above, the headquarters building is shaped like seven squares, connected by their corners and forming a cross with an inner cross-shaped courtyard, open at the north side (the front of the building, facing Anderson Hill Road).

The building's square blocks rise from the ground "into low inverted ziggurats", according to the pamphlet, with each of the three floors having strips of dark windows topped by strips of tan-white concrete or stone. At the entrance, a long, straight drive leads up to the building. Where the courtyard meets the driveway, the PepsiCo corporate flag flies together with the flag of the United States. A strip of lawn and rows of trees extend down the open, north arm of the cross-like courtyard, ending in the center, where a large fountain with David Wynne's "Girl with a Dolphin" is surrounded by a wide paved area. The three closed arms each have sunken gardens with trees, bushes and, in the middle arm, a small pond, together with sculptures, none of which are monumental. Surrounding the building, and seen in distant vistas, are monumental sculptures and nearby gardens with small ponds.

The vast south lawn allows the viewer to take in the full size of the structure, and the lower ground enhances the height of the building, an effect lessened on the north (entrance) side by trees and a more level approach.

Read more about this topic:  Donald M. Kendall Sculpture Gardens

Famous quotes containing the words description of the, description of, description and/or site:

    As they are not seen on their way down the streams, it is thought by fishermen that they never return, but waste away and die, clinging to rocks and stumps of trees for an indefinite period; a tragic feature in the scenery of the river bottoms worthy to be remembered with Shakespeare’s description of the sea-floor.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    Once a child has demonstrated his capacity for independent functioning in any area, his lapses into dependent behavior, even though temporary, make the mother feel that she is being taken advantage of....What only yesterday was a description of the child’s stage in life has become an indictment, a judgment.
    Elaine Heffner (20th century)

    Everything to which we concede existence is a posit from the standpoint of a description of the theory-building process, and simultaneously real from the standpoint of the theory that is being built. Nor let us look down on the standpoint of the theory as make-believe; for we can never do better than occupy the standpoint of some theory or other, the best we can muster at the time.
    Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)

    The present hour is always wealthiest when it is poorer than the future ones, as that is the pleasantest site which affords the pleasantest prospects.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)