Vertical and Horizontal Movements .

My original concept was about the effects of the powerful and threatening aspects of nature on urbanites who have not been exposed to nature enough to understand her. I imagined a ground plane revealing dramatic earth moves and the golf course raised above the ground, protected from the violence below yet still threatened by the prospect of a fall. However, I began to wonder whether the artificial ground movements would really stimulate emotions.

I then remembered a title of a book I had read called In a Dark Wood Wandering and it conjured up many experiential images of the forest. To wander in a forest evokes images of darkness and confusion, a struggle toward understanding or freedom. For urban dwellers it is both more an imagined experience than an actual one on one hand yet the physical dimensions of a forest are similar to those of some city streets. The forest as an unknown, a potentially scary place, is less about forcing emotions, as was the earth moves idea, than laying the ground for them.

To wander in a forest one needs to finally reach the edge, the light. The ellipse is raised up high to give views of the city. I think this part of the design has become a story about a different kind of movement, maybe a migration movement.

The course itself also deals with movement- water movement. Each hole is a raised platform that relates to a different kind of water movement. There is a companion path, like a path along a stream, that moves along side the platforms and connects them. The golfers never touch the forest floor.

The ball will also have a course that runs from one hole to the next

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