#noguchi-sunken-garden

#noguchi-sunken-garden

"The mystery to me is how something so big and that was supposed to be so prominent has gotten so forgotten," Richard White, a Stanford professor emeritus of American history, told SFGATE.

The sculptures are designed to contrast Manhattan's monumental architecture with imagery drawn from fairy tales, archetypal symbols and dreamlike storytelling. Their polished steel surfaces will reflect the surrounding city while their whimsical forms invite pedestrians to pause-and maybe look up from their phones for a minute.

The Eckling is designed specifically for balcony corners, addressing a gap that rectangular window boxes and round hanging pots have never managed to fill. Most railing planters sit along a straight stretch of rail, so corners get skipped entirely. An L-shaped recess cut into the base of the hemispherical bowl allows it to rest squarely on two railing legs at a corner junction, no extra hardware required.

A slender white form hovers above the fields on minimal supports, as if a thin wing had just been lifted by the wind. "Floating" describes both a structural condition - a thin roof suspended above the ground - and a quality of time in this place, where mist drifts, light shifts, and one pauses briefly on the mountain, as in a fleeting moment of respite.

It once belonged to Julian Eltinge, a vaudeville performer who usually played women-so convincingly that audiences were often shocked when he revealed himself to be a man. Starring in musical comedies like The Fascinating Widow, The Crinoline Girl, and Cousin Lucy (all title roles written for him), Eltinge went on to become one of the highest paid movie stars of the 1920s. One prominent critic cleverly dubbed him "ambisexstrous."

Architecture that celebrates the natural transition between day and night, using light and shadow to create a dynamic play of contrasts. The filled spaces, with their defined functions, are complemented by the emptiness of the courtyards, which act as visual and sensory ventilators.

To drink, to bathe, to swim, water has been integral to every society, at every point in our relatively short history here on earth. We connect, drink, and extend ourselves over water, a lifegiving force whose polarity explains much of human behavior. Fostering this sense of community is vital to our health and happiness as well.

The setup is deceptively simple. A circular concrete ring, complete with a landing pad and three descending steps, defines the play area. Inside that ring is a field of refined sand. Rising from the center is a tall cone wrapped entirely in polished mirrored steel. Solar panels sit on top, charging batteries during the day so the whole thing lights up at night. No Wi-Fi. No app. No QR code.

To see where the moon melts over the garden,or where the bats flit, or where the air sweetens with pollen and moth-frenzy, I recommend a night walk to discern the perfect patch for it. Under this glow, we could all use a distraction-dig with a silver shovel and choose colors that swoon and moan under our satellite: dusty pinks, baby blue, lavender, white, and butter yellow gems unfurl at dusk until dawn.

The red sphere, originally associated with the ritual of celebration and the expectation of magic, is stripped of its function and returned to the landscape as a heavy, vulnerable form without foundation. Suspended by a hemp rope from a bare century-old tree, the object exists between ground and space; neither in fall nor at rest, but in a prolonged state of uncertainty.

Ross partnered with architect and designer Suchi Reddy to reimagine the interiors, continuing a creative dialogue that has unfolded over more than a decade. Their shared interest lies in neuroaesthetics - the study of how environments affect emotional and physical well-being - and Standing Wave becomes a built expression of that. Rather than adding architectural flourish, the transformation focused inward: the existing floors and ceilings were preserved while walls were repositioned, rooms resized, and sightlines recalibrated to boost views of the ocean, rocks, and sky.

The six-month extension must be approved by the Visual Arts Committee, the full Arts Commission and then Recreation and Parks. Both the Feb. 18 Visual Arts Committee meeting and the full Arts Commission meeting on March 2 will provide opportunities for public comment on the proposal. A spokesperson confirmed that Recreation and Parks does not incur any costs from the installation of R-Evolution. In a presentation created by Building 180 and the Big Art Loop for next week's meeting, R-Evolution is framed as a convenient placeholder until Embarcadero Plaza and Sue Bierman Park renovations begin. Recreation and Parks currently lists that project's construction start date as "TBD."

Sure, those festive holiday lightshave officially burnt out, but that doesn't mean things have to be dark and dreary this winter: the Union Square Partnership (USP) is graciously adding some light and liveliness to the darkest time of the year with its new interactive art installation, "Patterned Behavior" by MASARY Studios, on view every evening (dusk to 10pm) from now through Tuesday, February 17.

Topped with a roof shaped like a crabshell, Le Corbusier's Chapelle Notre-Dame-du-Haut is a sanctuary amid the French mountainside. The 1955 construction rests atop a hill in Ronchamp, standing unobstructed by the otherwise forested inclines. As the sun rises and falls, light filters in through the mélange of rectangular windows tinted to cast streams of color around the space. The stained glass apertures of Le Corbusier's modernist chapel are a clear reference point for Luftwerk's "Open Frame."

The pool doesn't sit beside the house. It doesn't occupy the backyard. It runs straight through the middle of the living space, dark-tiled and creek-like, with stepping stones crossing it at the entry. This is the organizing principle of Holocene House: water as hallway, water as climate control, water as the thing everything else revolves around.

Sometimes the best architecture knows when to turn away. UK studio Denizen Works just completed their first project in Japan, and it does exactly that. The House in Onomichi presents an almost entirely blank facade to the street, creating what founder Murray Kerr calls an "enigmatic quality." But this isn't architecture being rude. It's architecture understanding that privacy can be the ultimate luxury.