At our Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden construction site, highly skilled stone masons have arrived to construct stacked stone walls. Together with the historic concrete walls, these walls will form new display areas for sculptures, bronze reliefs, and other types of art.
Building on the experience in designing stacked-stone walls in Japan, artist Hitoshi Sugimoto has developed a unique stacking technique with a group of masons. This technique varies for every project, but always relies on careful planning of proportion, stone sizes, joint direction and resulting pattern. Every stone has its compositional role to play. The walls will be built out of solid stone, not as a veneer. All joints remain open and water can freely drain through. A stainless-steel structure in the center is included as safety, with stones attached to the steel structure with as little mortar as possible. The battered shapes of these walls recall the existing concrete walls around the museum plaza and follow the structural concept of stacked walls built for thousands of years.