Eixample

A fallen sky is reflected in the undulating forms emerging from the grass in Barcelona’s Parc de l’Estació del Nord, in a subtle interplay with the natural surface. This is the sculptural ensemble designed by Beverly Pepper to decorate the new park laid out on the site of a disused railway station.

Nature provides the canvas and the earth the sculptural material. This was the thinking behind the decorative intervention carried out in 1991 by the American artist Beverly Pepper, in association with the landscape architects Carme Fiol and Andreu Arriola, in Barcelona’s new park, the Parc de l’Estació del Nord. The project marked the beginning of a new way of understanding urban parks in which sculpture integrated into the natural space took on special importance.

In this case, the design of the park, which stands on land formerly occupied by a railway station, gave Pepper the opportunity to develop a delightful concept. The fallen sky is mirrored in the mosaics that cover the mounds that emerge from between the areas of grass. Small ceramic stones in light, transparent colours, arranged like trencadís, the mosaic technique that makes use of broken pieces of tile, reflect the light blue of the clear Barcelona sky. The blue represents the sky and the sea, Barcelona’s two key elements, and the mosaic reminds us of Gaudí and pays tribute to him, while tying in with the trencadís mosaics in the Park Güell. Pepper gave birth to a sculpture which fitted in perfectly with the reclaimed surroundings of the park where the combination of the blue undulating forms of the sea and the sky contrast with the green of the grass.