Kiley Garden

Description

Kiley Garden formerly known as NCNB Plaza: A Brief History: Prior to 1988, the North Carolina National Bank selected Tampa’s downtown waterfront edge as home for their corporate headquarters. Located south from the Tampa Museum of Art, NCNB Plaza was designed by award winning architect Harry Wolf and National Medal of Arts recipient Landscape Designer, Dan Kiley. Both designers collaborated and unveiled a total work of design of three parts; Tampa’s only cylindrical tower, two glass cube buildings and a garden all based on the Fibonacci sequence. The Fibonacci sequence is a series of numbers in which each number equals the sum of the two preceding numbers (1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21 or 1+1=2, 2+5= 5, 5+8=13 and so on). The Fibonacci sequence was used to determine window sizes, arrangements, proportions and patterns on all three parts of the NCNB Plaza. That is why these parts work so coherently as a total design, through orientation and placement. In 1988, NCNB Plaza, now referred as Kiley Gardens, looked very different than today. At the entrance of the park, an exposed north and south running translucent floating canal once carried water overhead. This canal showered visitors below with shimmering sunlight. The water also flowed along limestone runnels to a series of reflecting pools throughout Kiley Gardens. Part of the translucent canal still exists between the cube buildings and cylindrical building. During operation, Kiley Garden served as a host for weddings, festiva