Bilbao grew bushes

It is a garden sculpture that is meant to narrate opposition between nature, architecture and public space. Located in Bilbao, Spain, Diana Balmori was asked to design a garden on the steps between two Arata Isozaki Towers leading to a Santiago Calatrava footbridge.

The irregular shape of the bushes that seemingly gush down the stairs made it look sculptural. This garden feature did not have to violate or alter the existing condition of the site. It is an installation that looks as if it was just added in the public space and can be taken out anytime....it's like your secret garden...shavable.


Even if it's protruding out from the ground, from afar it looks like a crevice that eventually grown pubes of different colors. so cute.
The top view where the upper portion doesn't really look as fluid as I thought it should be. But if fluidity is not a concern, it looks like a perverted guitar.

It would have been playful if the upper portion is big enough to accommodate people. We can slide or roll on it, then land on the lower portion of the grassy ground cover. On it we will chase butterflies, tickle each other and sing songs for Peace.

Description from Balmori Associates:

The garden climbs the stairs, running in undulating lines of different textures and colors. Envisioned as a dynamic urban space; it moves in time and with the seasons. Its lush planting cascades down as though the garden was flowing or melting, bleeding the colors into each other. In one gesture, it narrates a story of landscape taking over and expanding over the Public Space and Architecture, therefore transforming the way that the stairs and the space is perceived and read by the user. It is a garden of contrasts: the contrast between native and exotic plants, between the red flowers and the green grass, between the green grass and the grey paving. In form, the garden engages the horizontal plaza with the rising vertical plane of the steps and the upright gesture of Eduardo Chillida’s sculpture. Like the famous Spanish Steps in Rome, the garden is not only designed for visitors to ascend and descend, but for them to linger, and just be.