Tesselescence (Garden Apartment Gallery)

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Tesselescence (Garden Apartment Gallery) *

the available city

A quilted landscape installed at Garden Apartment Gallery (GAG) for Chicago’s 2021 Architecture Biennial.

Tesselescence (Garden Apartment Gallery) was an outdoor installation by Keeley Haftner on the front lawn of Chicago’s Garden Apartment Gallery, founded by Marlene Krygowski. Using the tumbling blocks tessellation pattern, the work arranged the yard in three tones: cropped sections of the found overgrown garden, newly laid sod, and open soil seeded with bird- and butterfly-friendly plants.

Part of Haftner’s “Tesselescence” series, the project combined the concepts of tessellation—a two-dimensional pattern with a three-dimensional effect—and obsolescence. Initially installed as a strict geometric design, the work was intended to change over time: after winter, perennial seeds, grasses, and weeds began rewilding the space, gradually softening the anthropogenic pattern into a more naturalized, ecologically supportive urban garden.