Andrew Colopy
2019
The Sheldon Plaza is a vital new public space and critical link in the Grand Center Artwalk of St. Louis, connecting The Sheldon Arts Foundation to neighboring cultural institutions, including the Pulitzer Foundation, CAM and Public Media Commons. Through a series of terraced spaces for the outdoor display of art, staging of performances and educational gatherings, the Plaza brings Sheldon’s galleries and concert hall out and into the city. Setting the stage is a dramatic new vertical garden, with a rich variety of climbing plants that ascend an irregular pattern in contradistinction to the building beyond thanks to a novel, digitally fabricated structural array—the world’s largest tensioned plate structure.