Harvard's Tanner Fountain is to receive this year's Landmark Award from the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Designed by landscape architect Peter Walker of the SWA Group, it's the first project for an institution in the "Landscape as Art" movement.
When the fountain was commissioned by then-Harvard president Derek Bok, he asked the designer to come up with a fountain without a basin. Past fountains at Harvard had all been eventually filled with soil by maintenance crews and turned into planters. This fountain is roughly a 60-foot diameter circle formed by 159 granite boulders that were cleared from regional farms around the turn of the century.
The water for the fountain comes from 32 nozzles imbedded in and around the stones, and they produce a mist that hovers above the circle spring through fall, producing rainbows when the sun falls just right.
After the fountain was installed, some critics suggested that it is a symbolic representation of the Big Bang. Whatever the maintenance requirements, this fountain is not likely one day to be filled with plants.
(image: Alan Ward)
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