While there are several entrances to the building, the fountain with the panther is located at the front of the activity level front as visitors approach the building, it is where people gather and there are lines of patrons coming to watch athletic events and concerts.
“Designing in this hardscape area, we needed to create a large enough space for many people entering at once, but also to help with the flow of people, for gatherings, and to allow for emergency vehicles and for protection of the building itself,” explains Hayter.
“We finally landed on a design with three fountains. The one, larger fountain at the centre with the panther, and two smaller circular fountains which resulted in what we affectionally called ‘mickey-mouses ears.’”
For the two “mickey-mouse ear” fountains on either side of the panther fountain, Lou Sadler was the primary designer. Sadler was careful to design fountains that were keeping with the building’s architecture, while complementing the larger fountain. Hayter describes the campus as “Georgian architecture, but on steroids” because the scale is not traditional, but the forms and materials are Georgian.
The space in that area greatly impacted the size and scale of the smaller two fountains. “We had to be sure there was room for people as well as EMS, firetrucks, full coach buses around the main fountain and the two smaller fountains had to accommodate UPS and other smaller types of vehicles that pull up to the building, as well as protecting the building and helping with people flow,” explains Hayter.
Sadler began playing with classical European forms of tiered fountains found in French and Italian fountains with scuppers that fall from one to another. The fountains have brick on the lower basin and the precast concrete in the fountains looks like limestone—borrowing from the building’s architecture and incorporating the design into the fountain. Each bowl has its own supply of water that is super-charged, so it looks like the water from the top makes it way to the bottom in a uniform manner, without running out of water by the time it gets to the bottom. These fountains are completely custom made, using colourized concrete, by a company in Georgia called Georgia Pre-Cast.
