Landscape architect Martha Schwartz is known for her experimental and urban oriented, interactive approach. Debuting with the transformation of her own garden in a bagel installation, her career is characterized by a marked modernism, reflected by abstract geometries and the use of unconventional materials. Believing that sustainability weighs more when it becomes a life style than if it’s just a series of isolated gestures, she supports the importance of public space as the centerpiece of sustainable development through its civic and social roles.
These principles are clearly embodied in the Grand Canal Square project. We are presented with a sovereign urban space, embodying a magnetic force of attraction. Despite the overwhelmingly intense architecture that defines its limits, the square does not subordinate to it, but rather responds with a complementary design of equal intensity.

The idea to recover the old mansion and to restore the charm of old vine estate was entrusted to architect Alexander Beldiman, he found that balance between tradition and modernity that would revive the family domain. In contrast to the old mansion and also in perfect balance with this, the new building designed to house the cellar fits into the landscape with its walls covered with Arnota limestone, with the lawn that rises to the roof and with its three wooden houses that guard the terrace.

The project appears as a series of gardens situated at various levels. Moreover, the vegetation on each level is different: the perimeter of the site is marked by the presence of numerous trees, bamboo reefs and bushes; the suspended garden on the top floor comprises of an interior L of wall plants and an exterior L of flowery bushes. The interior courtyard is predominantly green – lawn grass and conifers, rising up beyond the level of the top floor as vertical emphasis. The site was lined off with a combination of bush fences, natural stone vertical panels and wooden panels, reflecting (or rather, visually obstructing) the internal organization of the house and marking a continuation of the garden vegetation, as well as delineating the private areas on the ground floor and the access areas. Seen from the outside, the dominant elements of the house are the horizontal of the top floor garden and the slightly drawn-in line of its roof.

An allusion to a real, concrete, well defined space that is at the same time an imaginary space, abstract and ephemeral, equally determined by its massive elements, sunlight and the line of the horizon, the project whose creator and beneficiary is Antón García-Abril, defines open spaces in an unusual way, by juxtaposing giants.
In similar situations, the most common solution is to reduce the section of the structure to a necessary minimum, so that it becomes supple, slender, elegant, leaving as much space as possible for glass surfaces; in this case, however, where open space is defined through the presence of its opposite, the key-word is juxtaposition: the beam joints literally suspend the ensemble in mid-air; around them, one can create a series of completely open spaces, exterior and interior.