Landscape Architect Sara Zewde Reimagines the Land at Dia Beacon, New York
Dia Art Foundation announced a major landscape project to reimagine the land at Dia Beacon, New York. Commissioned landscape architect Sara Zewde of Studio Zewde aims to go beyond the simple arrangement of attractive plants and integrate ideas of ecology, culture, and people into the design. Taking over the museum’s 32-acre campus, the project will create an expanded outdoor park, free to access for visitors and locals alike, complete with native meadows, sculptural landforms, and winding pathways. The project, which has been recently extended to also include the museum’s eight back acres, is expected to open to the public in 2025.
Located on the 32-acre former industrial site of the Nabisco box printing factory in the Hudson Valley, the Dia Beacon Museum houses Dia Art Foundation’s collection of works by conceptual, minimalist, and land artists. The experience of the museum is thus linked to the landscaping surrounding it. Studio Zewde’s approach responds to the location’s particular conditions and history, as well as to Dia’s collection of Land art. In addition to extensive research, the studio also discussed with Indigenous organizations around Beacon and with artist Robert Irwin, who designed the original landscape framing the museum entrance.
The design introduces winding pathways that connect the sculptural hills with the meadowland, recreating the patterns of water moving through the floodplain. It also creates references to the Indigenous river crossing and movements through the land, while also allowing the public to experience the landscape.
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The design also takes into consideration the changing weather patterns and strives to create resilience against rising waters. The presence of water on site is thus choreographed through landforms and the extensive meadowland, in addition to underground storage, all designed to manage the range of water levels. More than 90 native meadow species are introduced, along with nearly 400 new trees and shrubs to support the water management. A small lawn area is also integrated to offer event-organizing possibilities for the institution’s outdoor public programming.
The landscape project is designed by Studio Zewde, in conjunction with Sherwood Design Engineers, LWLA (Larry Weaner Landscape Associates), and Pine & Swallow Environmental.
History’s impressions on the land that now hosts Dia Beacon inspire our design for the landscape. Our work together with Dia Art Foundation has been a process of listening, seeing, and amplifying the patterns of movement, water, material, and culture across the site over time. The design’s landforms, the meadows, and the embrace of water in the landscape are a means of managing the 21st-century challenge of rising water but are also a means of remembering. We are honored to be working with Dia on this project of opening up eight acres of land to public access. – Sara Zewde, Studio Zewde’s founding principal.
New York-based landscape and urban design firm Studio Zewde was founded by Sara Zewde in 2018. The firm’s work gained recognition for its integration of cultural native approaches and careful site interpretation. In 2021, the Black-women-owned film joined a multidisciplinary team to design the redevelopment of Kingsboro Psychiatric Center in Brooklyn.
