gaining

To update an underutilized landscape at Dia Beacon, Sara Zewde is digging into history, championing resiliency, and leaning into beauty

- SAM COCHRAN

Visitors to Dia Beacon have always left with lasting impressions, be it of Richard Serra's monumental steel curves, Dan Flavin's fluorescent revelations, or Louise Bourgeois's arachnid homage to mom. What they've never left with, however, was a proper sense of the grounds to the museum's south. Spanning eight acres, the riverfront plot has long centered on a broad swath of flood-prone lawn, submerged during Superstorm Sandy. "It's been a frustration for our team to have a landscape that you could look onto but not access," reflects Jessica Morgan, Dia's Nathalie de Gunzburg Director. "Wouldn't it be lovely to invite people outside?"

Three years ago, that ambition led the museum to landscape architect Sara Zewde, an AD100 talent known for creating green spaces that are at once culturally affirming, ecologically functional, and aesthetically pleasing. "We are thinking about the histories and challenges of a place, but we are also profoundly moved by beauty," Zewde reflects of her Manhattan-based practice. That open-ended strategy resonated with Dia. "Sara's approach is so embedded in listening and asking hard questions," says Morgan. "We wanted someone who would come in, not with answers, but with pathways to explore."