Jim Garland has built an international reputation on water.
The 1982 UL Lafayette alum is founding principal of Fluidity Design Consultants, a Los Angeles-based water feature and engineering firm.
He has created remarkable fountains that dot the globe: at the Hearst Headquarters Tower in New York City; Roppongi Hills in Tokyo; the Burj Al Arab in Dubai; the Lisbon Expo in Portugal; and VivoCity in Singapore, for example.
Garland has designed two granite fountains for the four-block-long David H. Koch Plaza being built at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
The outdoor plaza, expected to open late next summer, will span a section of Fifth Avenue, in the middle of Central Park. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is the second-largest museum in the world, behind only The Louvre in Paris.
Garland’s two, square fountains will bookend a grand staircase at the museum’s main, front entrance.
“Each fountain will be programmed by computer to provide a variety of water patterns during the warm months. In winter they will become reflecting pools, warmed by recycling steam to prevent freezing. Two sides of each fountain will serve as benches,” The New York Times reported in February 2012.
About six million people walk along that section of prime real estate each year.
The plaza had not been renovated for 40 years before construction began in January of this year.
During a groundbreaking ceremony, Daniel Brodzky, chairman of the museum’s board of trustees, said the reconstructed plaza “will give the Met a portal outside that is truly worthy of the masterpieces that grace our galleries inside.”
Gordon Brooks, an architect and dean of UL Lafayette’s College of the Arts, said the Metropolitan Museum of Art commission is “a major, major accomplishment, and one that will catapult Jim’s work further into the international spotlight.”
After earning a bachelor’s degree in architecture, Garland worked for a short time for architect Don Breaux’s firm in Lafayette. Soon, though, he hit the road for Los Angeles, where he picked up a master’s degree at UCLA in 1987. After that, he maintained a private practice and taught at Woodbury University.
Then, Garland joined WET Design, a company that has handled many domestic and international water design projects, including the spectacular Fountains of Bellagio in Las Vegas.
In 2002, Garland launched Fluidity Design Consultants Inc., which employs architects, designers and engineers.
“One of the lessons you can learn from someone like Jim is that careers often veer away from a linear path, and you are exposed to a very interesting parallel career,” Brooks said. “I think that happens to a lot of people in architecture, because architecture is all about design. Jim found that he was good at water design and fascinated by it, and is making huge contributions to the profession.”
One of Fluidity Design Consultants’ early projects was a water wall for UL Lafayette’s campus, between the Paul and Lulu Hilliard University Art Museum and a replica of a 19th-century plantation house designed by Louisiana architect A. Hays Town.
The major component of that water wall is granite, a durable material chosen because flowing water is abrasive.
A computer controls the water’s movement.
Michael McClure, associate dean of the University’s College of the Arts, is an architect who has made water a focal point of his work and study.
McClure said water is a flowing natural resource, but it has always been the foundation of architectural design.
“The history of architecture is the history of water. People build, and they are either trying to get away from water, or closer to it,” McClure said.
“It’s part of our DNA, our psyche, but, beyond that, it’s just very appealing. With water, you can’t separate poetic from practical, art from science.”