Brunelcare & Ashley House, Greville Care Home: Landscape artwork

Swedish visual artist Kerstin Bergendal has been commissioned by Willis Newson to collaborate with award winning architects Penoyre & Prasad and Landscape Architects Enzygo on the landscape design for a new 69 bed dementia care home, in Stockwood, Bristol.

The development is one of three new care homes being built in the city for dementia and extra care being developed with Bristol City Council to create beautiful therapeutic spaces for residents and a long term legacy for the care homes.

Kerstin Bergendal artwork

Image: Kerstin Bergendal

Bergendal's work intervenes with a place. This also means that the place and its people intervene with the art project, making it an unpredictable reciprocal process. 

When working on a site specific project Bergendal maps the present of the place and draws out an existing knowledge, or ”lived experience” from locals.

Kerstin has brought this approach to the commission to create a beautiful garden spaces that provide meaningful opportunities for engagement, both with nature and also socially with others.

She has been collaborating closely with landscape designer Steve Frazer from Enzygo to interpret and translate the feelings and opinions of staff, residents and local communities into the design.

It is a conversational approach, a sensitive reading of a site and situation, with ideas and insights then incorporated into the fabric of the landscape design to create a 'Gesamtkunstwerk' (total artwork, comprehensive artwork).

This project has been commissioned and funded by Ashley House. Greville care home is a new 69 bed development which will be run by Ashley House and Brunelcare – Bristol Dementia Care Home Partnership - on behalf of Bristol City Council. In keeping with the Council’s public art policy, a budget for the development of a public art strategy and commissions programme was agreed by Bristol City Council to involve artists in the design and thinking of these spaces.

The development is due to be completed in August 2018.

 

 

 

The facade is an efficient modern skin over the top of the existing structure, made of powder-coated aluminium and glass which will be easy to keep clean.