“Urban Garden,” a colorful 27-foot (8.2-meter)-tall kinetic sculpture, has been installed as the centerpiece of the Sheraton Seattle Hotel’s Garden Walk, which debuted this past spring.
Urban Garden, designed by local artist Ginny Ruffner working with Seattle-based Fabrication Specialties, features a yellow daisy that spins continuously, a red watering can that tilts toward a flower pot on a programmed cycle and bluebells that open and close. A window in the base of the flower pot allows viewers to watch the sculpture’s interior mechanisms at work.
Urban Garden is the final piece of the Sheraton’s US$2.5 million Garden Walk project, which transforms the downtown city block between Pike and Union Streets into a greenway. The Garden Walk, designed by Gustafson Guthrie Nichol, includes vines that climb the Sheraton’s back wall, several large-scale mirrors that reflect the historic façade of the Eagles Auditorium and the Washington State Convention Center and a glass canopy that glows in the evening and protects pedestrians from Seattle’s familiar rain.
“The Sheraton Seattle Hotel prides itself on a commitment to promoting a positive community and for making private art accessible to the public,” said Matt Van Der Peet, Sheraton Seattle general manager. “With the Garden Walk, we are able to do both and revive what was once a nondescript downtown corner.”
