Gondwana Circle Design Competition

The San Francisco Botanical Garden, which encompasses a botanically diverse and ecologically important collection of over 7500 varieties of plants on 55 acres within San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, is sponsoring an open, one-stage, international competition to select a design for the Gondwana Circle. The Botanical Garden, owned by the City of San Francisco, seeks a design solution that effectively communicates the historical significance of Gondwana in relation to the evolution and current horticultural communities of the Southern Hemisphere.

Gondwana formed approximately 200 million years ago when the supercontinent Pangea split in two, creating Gondwana and Laurasia. The Gondwana continent, containing most of the landmasses found in today’s Southern Hemisphere, as well as Arabia and the Indian Subcontinent, moved south. The Sponsor views this as a unique opportunity to provide visitors of all ages to the Garden with an understanding of the mechanics of plate tectonics and plant evolution as related to Gondwana through educational and interpretive aspects of the winning design. The Gondwana Circle is a significant locus for the Southern Hemisphere collections, and should include a focal feature (e.g. sculpture, water feature, etc.

www.sfbotanicalgarden.org