Roberto Burle Marx Exhibit Fountain

Date: Summer 2019
Client: New York Botanical Garden
Designer: Raymond Jungles
Engineer: Silman
Fabrication: DCM Fabrication Inc.

This forty-foot long faux-concrete wall with an integrated spillway was developed, built and installed by DCM Fabrication for the New York Botanical Garden’s exhibit celebrating the career of landscape visionary Roberto Burle Marx. The piece is based on one of Marx’s unbuilt designs and was part of a show designed by Raymond Jungles. I was project manager for this piece, and was responsible for developing the design, producing all relevant drawings + models, and coordinating fabrication and installation.

The faux-concrete piece sat behind a pond, and had a spillway and pump system.
Though the piece was designed to look like concrete, it needed to be lightweight, quick to setup, and quick to dismantle.

I devised a support system that used a combination of welded steel support frames, Kindorf electrical channel, and plastic traffic barriers to support the piece from behind. Electrical channel gave us the mounting flexibility we needed to get a quick build and install off the ground.

The wall needed roughly 25,000 pounds of support to meet public wind safety requirements, but due to our limited time on-site and limited access to equipment, we needed a ballast solution that we could set up on our own. Using the botanical garden’s existing barriers was a cost-effective and feasible solution that gave us the weight we needed.

In section view, the steel supports and spillyway can be seen.

Due to limited fabrication time, it was important to keep all CNC’d parts well organized and clearly labeled. We were able to set up the piece in parts within the shop prior to testing, but we did not have space to fully assemble the piece until we were on-site.