Contemporary Art Shaping Our Environment: Public Art and Architecture
Originally published in Arts Interviews, September 2011
Where art and money meet, there has always been a debate about quantifying creative work. But to begin appreciating art's contributions to society, one need only reflect on the vast offerings shaping our environment.
The impact of art on society can be seen in the appropriation and activation of space, whether through permanent or ephemeral means. Its value lies in its ability to address social concerns, contribute to current dialogue, engage the public, and influence how people see and relate to the world. Art can be functional, decorative, or symbolic, and artists employ a variety of strategies and media to alter the environment. There is inevitable overlap among artistic categories — environmental design can function as public art, and a public art piece can also serve as a monument. What follows is a sampling of contemporary public artists and architects using traditional and non-traditional practices to reshape our environment.
Throughout history, art has redefined the landscape of urban, rural, and virtual spaces. Most notably, during the Renaissance in Florence, Italy, the Medici family recognized art as a source of power and prestige for a city and its patrons. They commissioned artists like Botticelli to create influential portraits — including the Adoration of the Magi — and engaged the architectural genius of Filippo Brunelleschi to design and execute the largest brick dome ever completed, finishing the Florence Cathedral and asserting their dominance over the city. Even now, though to a far lesser extent, art can transform neighborhoods and cities into culturally and financially thriving destinations.
Public Art
Public art can be funded by the public, by nonprofit organizations, by government institutions, or by private individuals. Works commissioned for public spaces are usually selected by a committee and run through a democratic process in which the public has a voice, though that process can still be problematic. Funding can be called into question by taxpayers. Politics surrounding the chosen artist or design can dilute the original work. Sometimes, a commissioned piece is not wanted by the community it was intended for. Sometimes the piece itself falls short in execution. But the benefits of public art can outweigh its deficits. Public sculptures can revitalize communities by becoming tourist destinations, transforming a location into an attractive and functional gathering space, and raising awareness of histories and perspectives previously unacknowledged.
"It's gonna happen fast — I know that much" was Dale Chihuly's closing statement at a press conference regarding a proposed museum to be built at Seattle's Seattle Center. Although criticized for his decorative aesthetic and perceived lack of conceptual depth, Chihuly continues to spread the cult of glass art worldwide.
Born in Tacoma, Washington, in 1941, Chihuly is part of the Studio Glass Movement. He is the founder of the Pilchuck Glass School in Stanwood, WA, and the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, WA. His public art spans the globe, ranging from fragile pieces hung from corporate and private indoor ceilings to more accessible works experienced in the open air by passersby.
On entering Chihuly's home city of Tacoma, one can see the Chihuly Bridge of Glass. This 500-foot pedestrian bridge links Thea Foss Waterway with the Museum of Glass and incorporates three Chihuly components: two free-standing blue blown-glass assemblages, and his "Venetian Wall" — an eighty-foot windowed wall encasing a collection of colorful glass vessels. What Chihuly offers with his public art is one man's vision of aesthetic beauty. He presents the world with his fragile craft and asks viewers to suspend their disbelief, trusting them to look without touching.
Not all public artists focus primarily on the decorative. Japanese American artist Norie Sato has built a career combining her creative and organizational abilities with function and planning. Her public art installations are context-driven, focusing on transportation, parks, universities, airports, and other civic structures. Her practice blends aesthetics with practicality. Like many city-funded public artists, she begins each project by researching the site's history and gathering information about the people who live there, relying on public input and feedback. Her materials have included sculpture, glass, terrazzo floors, integrated design, landscape, video, and light.
Sato is perhaps best known for her comprehensive role in Seattle's light rail system project. Using the theme of "cultural conversations" to guide her work, she served simultaneously as curator — securing contributions from other artists to portions of the light rail — and as artist and planner, operating within the constraints of an engineering and architectural framework. Research led her to incorporate symbols of history and culture at different stations along the line. Her stone-carved lion sculpture, Pride, is the first of several intended to guard the Columbia City Station's South Plaza entrance. The lions offer a contemporary interpretation of the traditional Chinese lion entrance guard.
Spanish-born artist Jaume Plensa is known for figurative sculptures that gracefully transform public spaces across the United States, Europe, and Japan. His most recognized work, Crown Fountain, is situated in Millennium Park in Chicago. Unlike traditional fountains, Crown Fountain combines surprise, technology, architecture, and community interactivity to engage the viewer. Set in a shallow black granite reflecting pool, two glass towers project fifty-foot-tall faces — drawn from over 1,000 Chicago residents — via LED lights. Water playfully pours from the mouth of each face into the pool below, enjoyed by adults and children alike. The piece is socially resonant and functional, creating a visually stunning destination for all seasons.
Japanese-born artist Tadashi Kawamata creates public art installations that function more like urban interventions — sometimes temporary, sometimes permanent. Working with the concept of chaos in the urban setting, Kawamata uses simple and found materials to build imposing architectural structures that intertwine, growth-like, with pre-existing architecture. In 1989, he created a temporary outdoor installation in Toronto between two empty neoclassical bank buildings. Utilizing a complex structure of raw timbers cobbled together at a monolithic scale, the work depicted fractal, almost nest-like imagery representing the constant cycle of urban construction and destruction. While Kawamata's conceptual concerns may elude the average passerby, the scale of his work and the simplicity of his materials are at once striking and accessible.
"My work is not really about nature, but rather a consideration of ideas of nature," says Mark Dion. The Massachusetts-born installation artist is known for creating work that challenges the cataloging and presentation systems used in museums of science, history, and art. Through his practice, he questions the ability of dominant institutions to serve as keepers and sharers of accumulated history — whether anthropological, sociological, or otherwise. Among his most compelling works is Neukom Vivarium at Seattle's Olympic Sculpture Park.
Neukom Vivarium is a complex ecosystem of ferns, firs, elders, hemlocks, Oregon grape, slugs, and insects — among other things — that survives on a giant, horizontal, decomposing log inside a terrarium-like structure. Visitors can witness the process of growth and decay through glass windows from outside, or enter the building to observe the transformation up close, with guides available to discuss the artist's intentions and the project's history.
Dion's piece succeeds on multiple levels. The iconography of the tree is a fitting choice for a sculpture park situated in the Pacific Northwest, where the tension between logging and conservation is an enduring concern. Like a working ecosystem, the installation offers itself as a place of learning for artists, scientists, and the general public. Its time-based quality — the continuous transformation of a living system — draws viewers back to witness change over time.
A contemporary current in art embraces community involvement with an eco-conscious edge. One artist collaboration transforming public spaces using both of those principles is Fallen Fruit, based in Los Angeles. This collective — David Burns, Matias Viegener, and Austin Young — creates community projects that use fruit as both a symbol and a practical medium. Questions of desire, relationship to the land, ownership, and mythology surround projects like Public Fruit Tree Adoptions, in which fruit trees are donated to the public, who must plant them in public spaces or along the edges of private ones. The benefit is both practical and aesthetic. Fallen Fruit, quite literally, nourishes the body and the mind.
Architecture
Like public art, architecture carries its own complexities. Unlike public art, architectural structures are often brought about without a democratic process involving the community. They are frequently privately funded and need not follow the same community support protocols. While buildings often must adhere to guidelines regarding location and context, a structure can be erected that entirely disregards established architecture in favor of an imposing form. Still, the field is evolving to include environmental concerns and alternative approaches to living space — a departure from the notion of the egocentric, dominating structure in favor of the pedestrian.
In a field where celebrity status rules, Frank Gehry is no exception. Since gaining recognition for his "Easy Edges" cardboard furniture in the 1970s, he has earned numerous awards and wide renown for his architecture. "I have always believed that art leads the way for architecture. Now it is technology's turn. But art will always be there to inspire architecture," stated I.M. Pei in reference to Gehry's designs. With his deconstructivist approach and gravity-defying structures, Gehry continues to make his mark on the built landscape — to either the awe or the discontent of those who must live with it.
Some of his earlier work is a welcome complement to its setting — Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, for example. Other works, such as the Experience Music Project in Seattle, read as gaudy, imposing, and overdeveloped. Where his style succeeds is in spectacle that doesn't overwhelm — the Guggenheim Bilbao in Spain being the defining example. A welcome addition to the region, the Guggenheim honors the city's identity as a steel town through its titanium exterior cladding, which reflects light and contrasts with the gray Basque sky. Its free-form shapes echo the curves of the river alongside which it sits. Dominant from the water, the building blends modestly at street level. As part of a broader revitalization effort for Bilbao and the Basque Country, the Guggenheim made the city a worldwide destination almost immediately upon completion.
New York hardly needs more attractions to make it a destination, yet the High Line landscape is something to behold. Designed by landscape architects James Corner Field Operations with architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the High Line operates as both a functional green space and public art. Built on what was once a 1.45-mile elevated freight railway running through Manhattan's West Side meatpacking district, the line has been reimagined as far more than a park. It is a walkway removed from traffic, housing native plantings, seating, rotating public art installations, and compelling spaces like the 10th Avenue Square at 17th Street.
The 10th Avenue Square is essentially tiered seating positioned directly above moving traffic, with a focal point on the street below. Two audiences inhabit this ongoing performance: those seated above, watching the city rush past, and those on the street below, looking up — separated by a floor-to-ceiling glass wall. Being on the High Line side is like briefly stopping time while watching the rest of the world, ant-like, scurry beneath you.
A project like this takes years to realize and requires sustained support from both the city and private donors. Without the advocacy of Friends of the High Line, this old railway would have been demolished. Today it serves as a serene walkway for commuters and visitors alike, a habitat for birds and butterflies, and a destination for those drawn to art and nature. The reimagined High Line has also begun revitalizing the neighborhoods in its orbit.
Sometimes art is not the object made, but the ability to recognize the things that already surround us as art. Hiroyuki Shinohara is a Japanese architect who conducted a study on bicycle street vendors in China, writing about the ingenious designs of their bikes and how these vendors help "animate" parts of the city through human interaction. During urban planning and development, buildings are erected, streets rerouted, and public art installed — but the human element can be overlooked. The simple act of buying food from a cart can reconnect us to some of the most basic necessities of life: food, shelter, warmth, and social interaction.
The public art and architecture that reshape our environment pass through a complex process of design, evaluation, funding, and execution. In the end, we as citizens and pedestrians have to live with it. In contemplating the value of that process, one thing is clear: society needs the arts to reflect who we are and where we have come from. Without that intellectual and aesthetic mirror, we risk becoming complacent in the tedium of the mundane — content to live in a vacuum of stale ideas.
Sources
Dale Chihuly — Chihuly Bridge of Glass, Tacoma, WA
"Bridge of Glass." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, last modified 2025, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridge_of_Glass.
"Chihuly Bridge of Glass." Museum of Glass, Museum of Glass, Tacoma, WA, https://www.museumofglass.org/visit.
Norie Sato — Seattle Central Link Light Rail
Upchurch, Michael. "Longtime Light-Rail Artist Norie Sato Is 'Curator' of Link Station Art." The Seattle Times, The Seattle Times Company, July 12, 2009, https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/longtime-light-rail-artist-norie-sato-is-curator-of-link-station-art/.
"Norie Sato." Artist Trust, Artist Trust, https://artisttrust.org/artists/norie-sato/.
Jaume Plensa — Crown Fountain, Millennium Park, Chicago
"Crown Fountain in Millennium Park." City of Chicago, City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/dca/supp_info/chicago_s_publicartcrownfountaininmillenniumpark.html.
Plensa, Jaume. "Crown Fountain, 2004." Jaume Plensa Official Website, https://jaumeplensa.com/works-and-projects/public-space/the-crown-fountain-2004.
Mark Dion — Neukom Vivarium, Olympic Sculpture Park, Seattle
"Neukom Vivarium." Seattle Art Museum, Seattle Art Museum, https://art.seattleartmuseum.org/objects/32046/neukom-vivarium.
"Mark Dion: Neukom Vivarium." Art21, Art21 Inc., https://art21.org/read/mark-dion-neukom-vivarium/.
Tadashi Kawamata — Toronto Project, 1989
"Kawamata: Toronto Project 1989." Mercer Union, Mercer Union: A Centre for Contemporary Visual Art, https://www.mercerunion.org/exhibitions/toronto-project-1989-drawings-and-maquettes-in-the-gallery-outdoor-installation-august-and-september/.
"Tadashi Kawamata." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, last modified 2025, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tadashi_Kawamata.
Fallen Fruit — Public Fruit Tree Adoptions, Los Angeles
"About." Fallen Fruit, Fallen Fruit, https://fallenfruit.org/about/.
"The Fruit of Experience." Art21 Magazine, Art21 Inc., Jan. 28, 2010, https://magazine.art21.org/2010/01/28/gastro-vision-the-fruit-of-experience/.
Frank Gehry — Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain
"The Building." Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, https://www.guggenheim-bilbao.eus/en/the-building.
"Guggenheim Museum Bilbao." Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc., https://www.britannica.com/topic/Guggenheim-Museum-Bilbao.
James Corner Field Operations & Diller Scofidio + Renfro — The High Line, New York
"History." The High Line, Friends of the High Line, https://www.thehighline.org/history/.
"The High Line." Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Diller Scofidio + Renfro,https://dsrny.com/project/the-high-line.