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:

    The Sage of Toronto ... spent several decades marveling at the numerous freedoms created by a “global village” instantly and effortlessly accessible to all. Villages, unlike towns, have always been ruled by conformism, isolation, petty surveillance, boredom and repetitive malicious gossip about the same families. Which is a precise enough description of the global spectacle’s present vulgarity.
    Guy Debord (b. 1931)

    The type of fig leaf which each culture employs to cover its social taboos offers a twofold description of its morality. It reveals that certain unacknowledged behavior exists and it suggests the form that such behavior takes.
    Freda Adler (b. 1934)

    Why does philosophy use concepts and why does faith use symbols if both try to express the same ultimate? The answer, of course, is that the relation to the ultimate is not the same in each case. The philosophical relation is in principle a detached description of the basic structure in which the ultimate manifests itself. The relation of faith is in principle an involved expression of concern about the meaning of the ultimate for the faithful.
    Paul Tillich (1886–1965)

    It’s given new meaning to me of the scientific term black hole.
    Don Logan, U.S. businessman, president and chief executive of Time Inc. His response when asked how much his company had spent in the last year to develop Pathfinder, Time Inc.’S site on the World Wide Web. Quoted in New York Times, p. D7 (November 13, 1995)