gardens at all scales of space and time
An emerging studio practice that provides design services for spaces, landscapes, and flowers. Working across these disciplines provides a means of engaging completely different scales of time, from the ephemeral bloom of a flower to the years-in-the-making of a house and the perpetual coming-into-being of a landscape.
Premise
Work between: disciplines
Work at: different scales of time and place
Work with: what you have
Make things into: something else, otherness
Leave room for: life, the unexpected
Let things be: unknown, magical
Aim for: beauty, utility, ease
“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need."
Cicero
About
I have worked in architecture and construction since 2002, on projects ranging from single-family house renovations and art gallery spaces to commercial and institutional buildings, and writing on architecture and design. One project was the ground-up design and construction of a house for a quilter in Alabama - I wrote about the experience here. I began working with flowers in 2013, inspired by the wild, loose style appearing at the time, and the potential of using flowers in large-scale installations. I have a Bachelor of Architecture from Cooper Union in New York and a Master of Building Construction from Auburn University’s Design-Build Master’s Program, which grew out of the Rural Studio. I am a licensed architect in California. Current projects include public artworks, botanical installations, and residential landscapes. I live and work in Santa Monica, over the hill from where I grew up in the San Fernando Valley.
“No report had prepared her for its peculiar glory. It was neither warrior, nor lover, nor god … It was a comrade, bending over the house, strength and adventure in its roots, but in its utmost fingers tenderness, and the girth, that a dozen men could not have spanned, became in the end evanescent, till pale bud clusters seemed to float in the air. It was a comrade. House and tree transcended any similes of sex. Margaret thought of them now, and was to think of them through many a windy night and London day, but to compare either to man, to woman, always dwarfed the vision. Yet they kept within limits of the human. Their message was not of eternity, but of hope on this side of the grave. As she stood in the one, gazing at the other, truer relationship gleamed."
E. M. Forster, Howard's End
Open to all commissions and collaborations!
say:
hello @ krystalchang . com
or use the form below