The Garden of Apollo

The hands want to see. The eyes want to caress' Goethe

A section of the architect s residence, remodelled in 2007 as a work area and cloistered courtyard. The interior houses a studio providing work spaces and meeting areas, while the walled garden provides an enclosure designed specifically as a meditative locus of calm and tranquility; a form of allegorical and illusory stageset, evoking Giorgio de Chirico's enigmatic Mediterranean canvasses, where dreamlike architectural images are juxtaposed with statuary to produce overall metaphysical effects of serenity and stasis. The architect has always believed that architecture must provide a sensorial experience and that the creation of any architectural space is not only about art, science and craft, but more so, about emotion, memory and story telling. The garden of Apollo is primarily designed as a secret garden, its objective is to create a theatrical oasis which enables one to distance oneself from the chaotic intrusions of everyday life, and to act as an antidote to contemporary man's mechanised and turmoiled lifestyle.

The garden is dedicated to Apollo the mythological god of proportion, music, poetry and magic. Coloured casts of this Greek sun god stand on pedestals as if guarding and protecting this enclave of quiescence. The materials utilized are Malta stone, concrete block and hardstone local paving. Planting around the area includes ambrosia, hyacinth and other nectared flowers all strongly associated with this mythological god. Use, is also made of the lush layered background of the main garden in the spatial illusion tradition of the 'borrow scenery' of the Japanese Kara-Senzui gardens. This is a work conceived as a 'built' poem to enable one to engage in dream and desire while evoking an architecture which reflects the architect s belief that built environments should above all provide soul enhancing ambiances. RICHARD ENGLAND.