Howser Landscape Installation

Sited in the desert near Twentynine Palms, this structure stands like a series of giant steel playing cards partially submerged in the sand. The off-the-shelf kit of parts includes seventeen 20’x8’x1/2" sheets of steel weighing one and a half tons each, twenty foot lengths of W5x16 steel sections cut to fit on site, and poured in place concrete footings that extend as far into the ground as the steel extends above. The latter is a response to the powerful forces of the desert wind. Undeniably foreign, the flat panels angle in two directions in dialog with the surrounding mountain range while the raw steel weathers and ages in a process that does as much to blend it into the environment as it does to protect structural core.