Article Summary:
Named in honor of Pat Plaxico, landscaping is part of an ongoing community effort to revitalize downtown Highpoint. Library plans to add a scholarship for Landscape Architecture and Garden Design to complement the existing $10,000 design competition scholarships for Interior and Furniture Design.

Final plans are underway to break ground on Plaxico Gardens, named in honor of Pat Plaxico.

The Bernice Bienenstock Furniture Library announced that final plans are underway to break ground on Plaxico Gardens, named in honor of Pat Plaxico, a long-time Library board member who has a distinguished history of service to the furnishings community. Work will begin on the gardens this fall and be ready for dedication in the spring of 2014. Charles Sutton, President of the Library’s Board of Directors commented: “It is our way of saying thank you to Pat for her efforts and to celebrate her contributions in a way that is relevant and meaningful.”

Front view of the Library from Main Street, High Point, NC

Plaxico is a nationally recognized interior designer renowned for the reuse of historic buildings — adapting old structures for new purposes. Her portfolio includes Historic Market Square, the EJ Victor building, the Phillips Building (now High Point Convention and Visitors Bureau) and the Bernice Bienenstock Furniture Library. “I’ve been a member of the Furniture Library board for 38 years.

Working on the recent restoration and renovation of the library was a real treat. This gardens and grounds project will further enhance the property — and invoke the interests and passions of the Library’s founders. The main street location will be an oasis of beauty and respite, a gathering place, and a destination for learning in the uptown area of High Point” said Plaxico.

Greensboro-based landscape architect and garden designer, Sally Pagliai, created the design and has been retained to install the project. She has fashioned gardens throughout the United States and Italy, including many in North Carolina. When asked about her inspiration, she replied “Gardens are lasting monuments to the human spirit and are an integral part to the promise of a beautiful home. They are personal sanctuaries of calm in a stressful world.”

Philip Gibbs, Senior Art Director at Alderman Company worked with Plaxico and Pagliai to create renderings to help visualize what the gardens will look like at maturity. Russ Bienenstock, Vice President of the Board of Directors commented, “The Gardens will be a wonderful place for students, designers, and all visitors with an interest in design, can find inspiration. The landscaping plan will make the Library more visible from Main Street, which will increase traffic and usage of the library’s resources. The gardens, as is the Library, will be open to the public and will help to encourage research, collaboration and scholarship. They will also make the Library more versatile for events during and between furniture markets.”

Rear view of the Library.

The Library intends to add a scholarship for Landscape Architecture and Garden Design to complement the existing $10,000 design competition scholarships for Interior and Furniture Design. The library estimates that it will cost approximately $150,000 to design, construct and maintain the gardens and to fund scholarships over the next three years, and is seeking contributions to support this effort. For more information contact the Library. You can view a brochure on the Library’s website athttp://www.furniturelibrary.com/what-we-are-doing

About Bernice Bienenstock Furniture Library:  The Bernice Bienenstock Furniture Library is a worldwide center for research, design and collaboration, which holds the world’s largest collection of rare and significant books on the history, and design of furniture. Founded in 1970 and endowed by the Bienenstock family, the Library is devoted the advancement of knowledge about design, furniture, interiors, architecture, textiles, finishes, and construction.

The rare book collection contains volumes published since 1640. With the exception of Yale, it is the only library in the United States that houses the original works of 18th century furniture masters Chippendale, Sheraton and Hepplewhite, as well as a complete set of Diderot’s Encyclopedia (26 volumes published in the 18th Century). Unlike Yale, the Bienenstock Furniture Library is open to the public. A special climate and humidity-controlled room houses these rare volumes. An appointment with the curator is required to examine these books, and you must wear white gloves, but they are available to the public. The library also contains rare drawings and furniture details. It is a treasure trove of inspiration for anyone interested in design.

The Library operates a specialty bookstore selling significant contemporary works, out-of- print, and hard-to-find volumes. Most Library services are free. The Bienenstock Furniture Library, located in High Point NC, is open to the public and welcomes professionals and scholars for research, collaboration, meetings, seminars, lectures, and events. Visit www.furniturelibrary.com. The easiest way to stay up to date on the developments of the library is to “like” its Facebook pagehttps://www.facebook.com/BienenstockFurnitureLibrary.

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Newswise — SYRACUSE, N.Y. — Landscape architects who want to design healing gardens to help people struggling with serious illness need to first understand more about the needs of the people who will use those spaces, according to a recent college graduate who did his independent research project last winter while undergoing treatment for leukemia.

Kevan Busa, who graduated from the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Foresty (ESF) here with a bachelor’s degree in landscape architecture in May, based his study on his battle with acute lymphoblastic leukemia and the bone marrow transplant that kept him hospitalized for three months at Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo.

“It was not the foreign culture I set out to study, but I got a whole new view on designing landscapes from living in a hospital,” he wrote.

Busa started on his unexpected journey in May 2012.

After four years as a member of the ESF Mighty Oaks soccer team, he was headed for a change in the fall of his fifth year. He was preparing to travel to Barcelona for his off-campus semester, the centerpiece of ESF’s landscape architecture program, when he sought treatment for a fever, dizziness and leg pain. He was quickly diagnosed with leukemia and he spent most of the summer hospitalized in Syracuse before he was transferred to Roswell for the transplant.

“I still wanted to graduate on time and do my off-campus project,” he said. “But when you’re spending two straight months in a hospital room, there really isn’t any other culture.”

Busa wasn’t the only person who wanted his education to stay on track. “We wanted him to graduate on time,” said Richard Hawks, who recently stepped down as chair of the ESF Department of Landscape Architecture. “So we decided to build on the experience he was having and not pretend it wasn’t happening. He did the research and wrote a paper. He did a very nice project.”

With guidance from Hawks and his advisor, Scott Shannon, who teaches in the LA department as well as serving as associate provost and dean of the graduate school, Busa plunged into online research, learning how healing spaces are designed and how they differ depending on their intended audience, be it the elderly, children or veterans. He learned that although existing research extolls the natural environment’s ability to speed the healing process, he wasn’t even allowed to have flowers in his hospital room because of his compromised immune system.

“How are these healing spaces going to help me if I can’t even have one teeny plant next to me?” he said. “Healing spaces are meant to help you but they’re not safe for someone who has had a bone marrow transplant.”

Busa said he was not allowed to visit Kaminski Park Gardens, an outdoor space designed for use by hospital patients, their family members and the staff. His magazine story details the problems: The chemotherapy and radiation had made him sensitive to sunlight and there was little shade in the park. The pollen, dirt and fungi that occur normally threatened his immune system. The use of mowers and leaf blowers stirred up particles that hampered his breathing. Sometimes there were crowds of people there, which he needed to avoid. Even a walk on bumpy pavement was difficult because of the IV pole that was by his side for two months.

In the hospital, Busa surveyed 90 people about healing gardens and found what they most enjoyed was the plantings and exposure to the sun, the very things he needed to avoid.

He wrote: “For many patients with compromised immune systems, the solution may be gardens that can be experienced from indoors, through glass. This idea may not sound terribly inviting, but it is a far preferable alternative to 100 days of brick walls.”

He wrote a first-person piece about his experience in the June 2013 issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine, published by the American Society of Landscape Architecture.

Busa is working full time this summer as an intern with the Syracuse Metropolitan Transportation Council, where he focuses on planning issues. He is interested in pursuing opportunities in the field of health care design. In the meantime, he has been invited to speak Sept. 26 at the American Institute of Architects state convention in Syracuse. He will give a 45-minute presentation to share his study. His presentation falls one day short of the one-year anniversary of his bone marrow transplant.

Hawks said Busa has already given professional landscape architects something to think about.

“People in the profession are now able to look at an area of practice that, fortunately, many people don’t get to see from Kevan’s perspective,” Hawks said.

He said it’s rare for a recent graduate to have a first-person piece published in the professional magazine. “I don’t recall it happening,” he said. “But from a human interest angle, it was a unique story and worth telling.”

Brad McKee, who has served as editor of the magazine for three years, said it’s unusual to feature the work of an undergraduate.

“They usually don’t get a lot of attention but that doesn’t mean they haven’t done much,” he said. “Kevan’s story was really interesting, it really struck a chord with me. He was there and he used his time wisely. He had a really unusual point of view. We don’t get a lot of stuff like that. All the pieces came together in a really profound and sobering way. Plus, given his situation, who’s not going to read it?”

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