Downtown Cary Park (USA)

Sweet Follies

Less well known than Silicon Valley, the Research Triangle - sometimes simply referred to as the Triangle - is located in a 12,000 km2 area of North Carolina and is the location of the second largest concentration of companies in the US tech sector. Set in the Piedmont, the attractive towns of Raleigh, Durham and Cary have no need to envy San Francisco Bay, if the constant influx of residents is anything to go by.

Since the 1990s, Cary’s population has tripled and the town features prominently in Livability’s Top 100 best places to live in the USA. This is a score that should be maintained, and even improved, with the development of a three-hectare park in the city centre. Officially opened in 2023, it marks the culmination of 20 years of discussions on the future of a vacant parcel, designated as a green space by the town council in 2001.

In 2018, a robust participatory process helped to define the park’s role with its future users. Landscape architect and prime, OJB with architect Machado Silvetti have translated these ideas into a playful project that banishes right angles. Curves reign supreme, both in the pathways and in the various pavilions featuring variations on the theme of the circular and conic geometry.

With pierced discs or undulating lines, these garden follies really stand out with their zinc roofs, set on wooden structures or stone piers. The materials are in keeping with the surrounding landscape.


Evoking stone and bark, QUARTZ-ZINC® precisely follows the capricious inflections of the roof slopes, sometimes laid on vertical walls, sometimes suspended in a seemingly precarious manner like a ribbon.

Concave or convex, the roof defines an interiority or directs the visitor towards the other attractions in the park, in a fluid and joyful movement. Its undulations blur the boundary between architecture and landscape interior and exterior.