Water Gardens
I visited Philip Johnson’s water gardens in Fort Worth and was excited to see this sculptural water fall of concrete forms and shapes. What I got was a fence and notices that said the active fountains are shut down. This is due to the fact that four people had lost their life a short time ago in the fountains which prompted the city to investigate the feature until further notice. I have only seen the fountains in pictures so I had to use a little imagination to picture the water cascading down the concrete walls. This fountain garden was hot and lifeless without the water. The other two fountains had water in them and seemed to draw people. There were students eating lunch and reading books on the steps of the garden walls under shade. The upper fountain would erupt every now and then and kids would rush to the edge to feel the cool mist. I had no want or need to go and do this since this part of the garden wasn’t as attractive as the steps leading into the main attraction. The lower reflection pool was calm with only one visitor sitting in a lawn chair asleep. It was peaceful down here under the shade trees that lined the courtyard. The water seemed unusually stagnant though. I didn’t want to dip my hand in to feel how cool it was, since there were bugs and leave among other things floating along the edges. Chris and I had made the comment that they need to shut the whole area down, clean it and then open it back up to visitors. The Area seemed teaming with life from pedestrians coming to catch a glimpse of things. They either liked it or they immediately left. Chris and I immediately left after taking some pictures and noticing the dirtiness of the whole area. They could at least leave the water running in the upper pool and leave the fence up.