Tau / Tony Smith Sculpture Project

South Orange, New Jersey

Sculpture Siting / Landscape Design / Installation Management

Influential abstract sculptor Tony Smith (1927-1980) lived most of his life in South Orange, New Jersey. In 2002, the Smith family gifted his sculpture ‘Tau’ to the Village of South Orange and AKD was commissioned to site the sculpture and manage its installation in Meadowland Park. The spatial structure of this landscape, defined by mature oaks and spring-flowering understory trees, created opportunities to engage the movement and mass embodied in Tau’s form. Tau appears to lean back into the hillside, resisting the pull of gravity and creating a direct relationship between the mass of the sculpture and our own physical experience of the topography. As one circles the sculpture, the arrangement of the plane surfaces unfold in light and shadow, creating the effect of a counterclockwise twisting motion moving up and out from the stable base. This spiraling movement is echoed in the placement of new understory trees, interplanted among the existing Dogwoods.

SITE PLAN

TAU IN MEADOWLANDS PARK

VIEW OF TAU FROM POND