Dezeen Magazine

Reflective dish of water to be installed at International Garden Festival in Quebec

The surrounding trees and sky will be reflected in a wide, shallow pool of water in this installation by Spanish architecture group Citylaboratory for a garden festival in Quebec, Canada.

Rotunda dish of water by CITYLABORATORY at Les Jardins de Métis Quebec

The Rotunda installation by Citylaboratory will be created as part of the International Garden Festival at Les Jardins de Métis in Quebec this summer.

Rotunda dish of water by CITYLABORATORY at Les Jardins de Métis Quebec

A large black basin will be filled with water to reflect the surrounding forest then left to be used by local wildlife.

"Conceived as a device capturing the beauty of nature, the intention is to transform the surrounding landscape into the garden itself by capturing what is outside its boundaries," said the designers, who are based in Santiago de Compostela in north-western Spain.

Rotunda dish of water by CITYLABORATORY at Les Jardins de Métis Quebec

"Water is used as a raw material to create a reflecting surface," they continued. "The container is simply a frame that suspends water above the ground; a homogenous black object, assembled in a direct way, minimising the expression of assembly joints and the contact with the ground."

Rotunda dish of water by CITYLABORATORY at Les Jardins de Métis Quebec

Once the dish is filled with water, the idea is to leave it to evolve over time as a source of water for birds and other garden life. Like a regular pond, it will be subject to falling leaves and fluctuations in heat, light and weather.

Rotunda dish of water by CITYLABORATORY at Les Jardins de Métis Quebec

The project is one of six winners in a competition to design an installation for the festival, which will take place from 28 June to 28 September 2014. The design was selected from nearly 300 proposals for contemporary gardens submitted by over 700 architects, landscape architects, designers and artists.

Previous installations at the festival include a garden full of mushrooms grown on walls of decaying books, which Dezeen featured at its inauguration 2010 and revisited again in 2012 once the fungi had time to develop on the books.