ann arbor MICHIGAN

suckerPUNCH: Describe your project.
EXTENTS: Reflections on the Lawn engages the yard as a rich cultural field, transforming turf into a theatrical landscape.

Rather than treat grass as a neutral backdrop for an arrangement of architectural objects, this proposal understands the lawn as a medium capable of engaging audiences and activating the imagination. From town squares and municipal parks to sports fields and suburban backyards, the lawn has played a crucial role in the formation of the American landscape and the development of our national identity. In many cases, the lawn is a civic showplace, a common ground that symbolizes our shared values as a community. Elsewhere, this domesticated landscape is a hedonistic carpet that underlies our playgrounds, bounds the edges of our pools and provides the setting for summer get-togethers. Much like the historic Ragdale Ring, the lawn in this proposal is a place for playing out myths and fantasies – a disciplined sward where imaginations can run wild. Located between the Ragdale House and the Barn House, Reflections on the Lawn shines a spotlight on the spectacle of suburban pastoralism by amplifying the material properties of grass and using them to create performance platforms that call into question the nature of our surroundings.

The proposal features three constructed lawns, each with a distinct approach to surface in both shape and finish. The material palette consists of paint, foam, and astroturf in various shades of green as well as custom-printed vinyl displaying over-scaled images of grass, all meant to evoke visions of turf imprinted in our imaginaries. Three oversized lawn ornaments are critical to the design strategy. Lawn ornaments grant access to our cultural fantasies about the lawn – a gnome evinces allusion to elysian fields, a pink flamingo connotes a tropical paradise. Leveraging this cultural significance, the oversized lawn ornaments in this project set the material composition and terms of engagement for each lawn. Their position and orientation calls to mind ritualized behaviors or means of approach. One could dip their feet in the Bird Bath, seek protection beneath the Bathtub Madonna, or focus their attention towards the Gazing Ball initiating movement around the site. Regular-sized lawn ornaments are also scattered throughout the site on pedestals. Though familiar in iconography, all of the ornaments are chrome-plated to reflect and manipulate the scenery. Thus, visitors arriving at the site are met with a strangely familiar yet alteric environment where various qualities of the lawn – its flatness, texture, color, and profile – are pulled apart and recombined to generate new forms of encounter and prompt reassessments of the present reality.

The proposed design offers a mix of thrust and arena configurations that still maintain the presence of a traditional stage. Because of their casual disposition and affinities with the landscape, the platforms can easily transition from garden pavilion to theater, stage to seating area, where audience members can both see and be seen. At the project’s end, everything will be sold at an on-site Yard Sale and the proceeds will go to charity. Reflections on the Lawn heightens our awareness of the lush yet unassuming scenery of our everyday lives.

Special thanks to Charles WEAK for his help on the project.

EXTENTS is a design practice led by McLain Clutter and Cyrus Peñarroyo.

More information at www.extents.us and @extents.us