Courtyard Garden at the Art Institute of Chicago

With all the attention tourists and locals pay to the new (ish) Millennium Park, this small courtyard at the Art Institute of Chicago is now mostly ignored, or at least underappreciated.   Which is a shame, because it's a lovely space.

A large pool with bubbling fountains arranges the space, grouping planters of low, wide-spreading hawthornes (Crataegus) on each side. 

 

English ivy (Hedera helix) are trained up the trunks, which has to be a bit of a maintenance issue - I would think they need to clip them back a few times a year!

 Buffering the traffic of Michigan Avenue are large planters of honey locusts (Gleditsia triacanthos var. inermis).  Much like at Paley Park, honey locusts are used to terrific effect as plants that can get quite tall in maturity but yet grow very well in the space to which it is confined.  In the open, the tree could have a broad, spreading shape.  But in narrow confines, it has a loose, columnar habit. 

Millennium Park Site Details

Here are a few shots of some of my favorite site details at Millennium Park. 

I love the bench composed of separate 2x6s (or 2x8's-- I didn't measure it).  It makes for a great ad-hoc work space or picnic area in a park that is skimpy on lawn.

This fence separates a lawn area from the Frank Gehry designed stage to the right.

 

Check out how the profile diminishes as the fence gains height. 

 

The plant beds in Lurie Garden have stone retaining walls that are cut at an angle, so the appearance of a curb is minimized. 

A slip guard as one approaches a bridge over the water that runs through the park, bisecting Lurie Gardens from the rest of the site. 

The paths through the gardens are made out of small, long pieces of granite that vary in color between pink, peach, sand and white.

Millennium Park Lurie Garden

I've posted about Millennium Park twice before, though both times I used photos my mother had taken when she was in Chicago with my father.  These, I am happy to say, are photos I took myself.  I was recently in Chicago for the first time and of course, this park was my first destination.  

I was particularly excited to walk through the park's Lurie Gardens.  The park itself is designed by Gustafson Guthrie Nichol Ltd., though the plant selection was a collaboration with Piet Oudolf who is quite the "it" planting designer these days (he also worked with Jim Corner and Diller Scofidio on the High Line Park).

It's a beautiful garden, with painterly drifts of native perennials and grasses.  And obviously, it's a wonderfully appropriate context, as it evokes the prairie landscapes that are typical to the midwest.

 

I'll be posting a few more shots of the park in the days to come, with some focus on design details and plant species. 

Millennium Park Crown Fountain

Since I already posted some of my folks' pics from Millennium Park yesterday, I thought I would keep up the theme for this afternoon.  Today I'm sharing some of their photos of the Crown Fountain, designed by artist Jaume Plensa in collaboration with Krueck and Sexton Architects.

 

Water is a wonderful feature in any park where the summers are hot and Chicago is no exception.  97% of the water in this fountain is successfully recycled as well.  The fountain is comprised of two 50' glass towers on each side of the pool.  The towers collectively consist of 22,500 glass blocks. 

 

Video portraits of 1000 Chicagoans appear on the towers.  They are modern-day interpretations of the gargoyles that acted as downspouts on gothic cathedrals and at the end of each cameo, a spout of water streams out of one's "mouth" and into the pool.  

 

Millennium Park Cloud Gate

My desktop background is a rotating mix of photos from my iPhoto library.  When I was about to shut down my computer today this pic of Anish Kapoor's Cloud Gate was on display.  

And when I see it, it makes me kick myself that I have still (wait for it) never been to Chicago.  Quelle horreur!  My mother took this shot a few years ago and I think it's such a wonderful piece of landscape art.  The warped reflection plays with our sense of scale, vista and perspective in a completely fresh and innovative way, yet still follows a tradition that Andre Le Nôtre had so much fun with when he designed Vaux le Vicomte.

I'm definitely getting Chicago in 2011.

Though I'll probably wait for warmer weather.