The shifting purple mesh on the UW campus

If you find yourself wandering the University of Washington campus, you might stumble upon a spatial puzzle called Nine Spaces Nine Trees. It was created by Robert Irwin to explore that tricky friction between public and private spaces. The whole vibe depends on your perspective. As you move around, the fenced walls shift from feeling like solid boundaries to becoming semi-transparent when the light hits the mesh just right.

This installation has a bit of a nomadic history. It first showed up in 1982 on the rooftop of the city's Public Safety Building, but it eventually got forced out due to reconstruction. It landed on the campus in 2003, though the version you see today is a 2007 recreation instead of a carbon copy of the original.

Irwin made some specific tweaks for its new home. He swapped out the original red flowering plum trees for Winter King Hawthornes and changed the mesh color from blue to purple. He also added some octagonal benches that surround some of the trees.

It remains a cool spot today to watch the light play off that purple mesh. It hits that weird balance between a quiet, enclosed nook and an open walkway.

Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons