Suspended garden

The kinetic sculpture designed by Nomad Studio is nested within the courtyard of the Contemporary Art Museum of Saint Louis, USA, as an immersive space under a floating garden.

Nomad Studio, Green Air, installation at the Contemporary Art Museum of Saint Louis, USA

Green Air is a kinetic sculpture conceived by landscape architecture firm Nomad Studio, within the Contemporary Art Museum of Saint Louis in Missouri, USA. A systematic yet delicate arrangement of Tillandsias, hang from thousands of slices of repurposed wood, suspended from the courtyard’s steel canopy, moving as a supraorganism.

The installation has a powerful transformational impact on the courtyard at the heart of the Museum, as the sculpture hangs above the heads of visitors, swaying organically in the breeze, and sketching linear shadows on the courtyard’s ground plane. Green Air is the second act of a broad exploration that started in 2015 with Green Varnish, a monumental green fabric composed of thousands of succulent plants that symbolically covered all the inconvenient facts of our lifestyle. The installation was carefully deconstructed last fall and its components were reutilized to build this new one, creating a continuity and dialogue between the two pieces and the people who experience them.

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Nomad Studio, Green Air, installation at the Contemporary Art Museum of Saint Louis, USA. Photo Sarah Rothberg

Nomad Studio, Green Air, installation at the Contemporary Art Museum of Saint Louis, USA. Photo David Johnson

Nomad Studio, Green Air, installation at the Contemporary Art Museum of Saint Louis, USA. Photo David Johnson

Nomad Studio, Green Air, installation at the Contemporary Art Museum of Saint Louis, USA. Photo David Johnson

Nomad Studio, Green Air, installation at the Contemporary Art Museum of Saint Louis, USA. Photo David Johnson

Green Air, Contemporary Art Museum of Saint Louis, Missouri
Program: installation
Architects: Nomad Studio
Consultants: LIA Engineering
Installation team: Jessi Cerutti & Caleb Hauck
Maintenance team: St. Louis Master Gardeners
Year: 2016