Photography courtesy of the Missouri Botanical Garden
Missouri Botanical Garden
4344 Shaw
314-577-5100
Mackey Mitchell Architects’ assignment from the Missouri Botanical Garden was simple: Design a water feature.
Then the architects pondered the existential aspects.
“You think about water,” says Gene Mackey, the firm’s founder and principal. “You touch water. It’s wet. We drink water. It nourishes things. You think of a quiet pool, and there is very little sound. But the minute it is agitated, you get this wonderful sense of energy.”
They also thought about the bleakness of winter. “How do we make a place that is attractive when the water is off, so we don’t have to look at a basin with pipes? We thought, ‘Could we make an architectural statement with water, make a room of water that you could walk into?’” Mackey says.
The answer was yes. The result: a ring of grates with water spouting skyward. The first of nine projects that Mackey Mitchell is designing for the garden, the creation is only a short distance from the updated Doris I. Schnuck Children’s Garden.
“It is such a joy to watch how people react to it—and the decisions they make on what they are comfortable engaging in,” he says. “I’ve seen people walk right through the fountain and laugh as they are doing it. There is something very magical about it.”
