History
Dan Kiley (1912-2004) was arguably the most important landscape architect of the twentieth century. For over sixty years and in more than a thousand projects, he transformed the landscapes of private houses, public institutions, and vast urban spaces into magnificent places of natural beauty. Adhering rigorously to his lifelong tenet that the actions of humans are integral to the natural environment in which they live, he influenced generations of landscape architects and designers and heightened the public's awareness and appreciation of our man-made surroundings. In September 1997, Kiley was awarded the National Medal of Arts, the highest honor that can be bestowed upon an artist in the United States , in recognition of his significant contributions to the design of major public spaces in this country.
In the 1980s, architect Harry Wolf designed a thirty-three-story tower and two six-story cubic bank pavilions for a Tampa corporate property. He invited Kiley to collaborate with him on a garden – NationsBank Plaza Park – that was based on the mathematical sequence that ordered the buildings' fenestrations, a series of numbers called the Fibonacci sequence that forms the basis for the “Golden Rectangle” and the “Golden Spiral.” Just as this sequence had been used by Wolf to determine the tower radius, floor heights, dimension and the frequency of window openings, Kiley used the same proportions to determine the dimension and patterning of the walkways and grass panels that comprised the grid pattern of the plaza. This synthesis of building and garden – of translating a mathematical sequence into the rationale for the ordering of designed elements – created a powerful and cohesive design of historical significance.
The NationsBank Plaza site occupies a 4-1/2 acre wedge in downtown Tampa , Florida and is bounded by North Ashley Drive to the east, East Kennedy Boulevard to the south, the Hillsborough River to the west and the Tampa Art Museum to the north. It is eight feet above street level and is situated over a two-level parking garage. Kiley's NationsBank Plaza Park landscape is divided into parallel rectangular grass areas each 78 feet wide and varying in length, with 13-foot pathways between them. Pedestrians enter through a series of five palm allees. Sabal palmettos line the pathways, and six hundred Crape Myrtles are informally arranged within the area to contrast the site's geometry. The landscape still has high design integrity, but it is in fair-to-poor physical condition due to lack of maintenance and the removal of some historic elements.
The NationsBank Plaza Park (sometimes called “the Kiley Garden”) is considered by many historians and landscape architects to be one of Kiley's finest works. Others outside the profession of landscape architecture have recognized the project's importance. In 1991, the NationsBank Plaza project was awarded the Florida Association of American Institute of Architects' First Honor Award. In 1993, it was awarded the National American Institute of Architects' Honor Award: Peter Walker, a juror and a noted landscape architect, commented that the project
…is the best project both architecturally and landscape architecturally I have seen in many years. The relationship of the entry plaza, the main banking room (fabulous) and the landscape spaces between the lower and the old museum are marvelous, seamless and truly beautiful….
In August 2005, a selection of projects from the more than one thousand projects that spanned the sixty years of work by Dan Kiley was exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago. The NationsBank Plaza Park was one of the key projects featured in this show.
