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The well-ordered gardens belonging to the grand country houses in Georgian England often included statuary, temples and other architectural details called “eye-catchers,” garden buildings designed
to delight visitors. As part of a restoration plan for the walled garden at Great Britain’s National Trust’s Berrington Hall in Herefordshire, it was only fitting to respect that tradition.
Enter artists Heather and Ivan Morison of the cutting-edge design workshop Studio Morison. The team spent more than a year researching the estate’s Georgian history and the significance of the garden. Designed by Capability Brown, considered England’s greatest gardener and landscape architect, the garden was a symbol of the family’s wealth and sophistication.
The Morisons’ vision was to create a work that reconnected the space to some of the themes and activities present in the original garden and life at Berrington Hall in the eighteenth century. The design Look! Look! Look! is both a beautiful and functional structure set in the center of the garden. Its distinctive pineapple shape is a nod to the Georgian period, when pineapple was all the rage and likely grown on the estate; the fanciful pink color is traditionally Georgian as well.
First designed in paper using origami, the artists worked with the structural engineering firm Artura to construct it. The pavilion features a sunken metal foundation frame, held with screw anchors; the timber frame is overlaid with a weather-resistant fabric provided by Mermet.
The structure was broken down into 90 frames, each made up of an intricate pattern of connected timber pieces, constructed at Studio Morison. The fabric was pulled over and fixed to each rhomboid and then assembled on site. For more information, visit www.morison.info.
