Jail House Garden

Martha Schwartz

King County Correctional Facility

Both formal and playful, colorful geometric mosaics enliven a downtown corner.

The entry plaza outside the King County Correctional Facility features a colorful sculptural environment that brightens the building’s sober presence.

In Jail House Garden by Martha Schwartz, formal and geometric mosaics cover the focal wall, ground plane, and various integrated sculptural elements. An abstracted archway and imagery in the corridor suggest distance and a vista. A set of playful seating elements resemble game pieces, topiary, or mathematical systems. Together, the components of this work visually expand the space and respond to the surrounding architecture.

Schwartz is a landscape architect, artist, and educator whose other notable works include Grand Canal Square Plaza outside the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre in Dublin, Ireland; Jacob Javits Plaza in New York, NY; Splice Garden at the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, MA; and Bagel Garden in Boston, MA.

About the Location

King County Correctional Facility

Located on a busy corner in downtown Seattle, the Seattle Division of the King County Jail opened in 1986. Today four permanent public artworks are sited at the correctional facility. A year after the building became operational, landscape architect Martha Schwartz designed its colorful entry plaza and Benson Shaw created Torus Torum for the south…

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