public spaces
For years, Montréal’s arts district has been the venue for music and theater performances, art exhibitions, festivals and all manner of cultural events. As part of a revitalization process in the area, notes David L’Heureux, the city recently unveiled the Place des Festivals and a spectacular watershape he and a distinguished design team built at its heart as a gathering place for residents and visitors of all ages and a civic focus for fun, relaxation and visual joy. Throughout North America in recent years, cities have turned to a variety of watershapes to enliven and, occasionally, revitalize their public spaces. These watershapes are more than the wonderful fountains long found in public parks and plazas. Indeed, the recent success of projects including Chicago’s Millennium Park and its ambitious combination of significant waterfeatures with gardens, architecture and art has demonstrated the tremendous potential that lies in crafting interesting, multi-functional places for people to gather. Canada offers a spectacular recent example of this trend in the form of
Back in September 2009, I took advantage of my annual trip to the American Society of Landscape Architects’ Expo by stretching things out with a few extra days in Chicago. I’ve always loved the city and was particularly excited by the thought of finally getting a chance to see Millennium Park in person. I’d heard and read a great deal about it, of course, and my interest went way beyond our coverage of
One of the clearest trends I’ve seen in watershaping through the past few years involves the use of water in the front spaces of properties, usually along a driveway or close to the main entrance. It’s something I’ve noticed on both the residential and commercial sides of the business, and these projects really do seem to be gaining traction as more time passes. In some cases, they might be the only watershape you’ll find on site. In others, they introduce a presence of water to be echoed
Our involvement with Vera Katz Park started with a phone call from Alan Beard of GBD Architects, a firm that has been responsible for designing several signature buildings in Portland, Ore. The project at hand was the complex renovation and transformation of the city's National Guard Armory into a modern theater and the new home of the Portland Center Stage Theater Company. After an energetic interview process, we were selected to design the site's landscape. We were enthusiastic about the project from the start. The sidewalk area we were designing is an integral part of the redevelopment of what's known as the Pearl District, a former industrial area now being revitalized with mixed-use buildings and high-rise developments. At 200 feet long by 20 feet wide, the space presented an interesting design challenge in an area much in need of parks and public places. The city's goal is to establish pedestrian connections throughout the neighborhood while creating a sense of community within the district. For our part, we saw the site, which was to be named in honor of former Portland mayor Vera Katz, a devoted supporter of the arts who had been instrumental in the repurposing of the Armory Building, as an opportunity to create a
Throughout ancient times, water was central to the thinking of Arab, Persian, Moorish, Moghul and Turkish architects and designers, with largely anonymous representatives of each civilization preparing elaborate spaces with fountains, reflecting pools and other watershapes at their hearts. In the past, these societies' greatest architectural works almost invariably featured elaborate watershapes that bespoke their technical skills as well as a general love affair with the beauty, luxury and necessity of water. With new developments burgeoning across much of the Middle East these days, fountains and watershapes of all varieties are once again playing important roles in design as
Throughout ancient times, water was central to the thinking of Arab, Persian, Moorish, Moghul and Turkish architects and designers, with largely anonymous representatives of each civilization preparing elaborate spaces with fountains, reflecting pools and other watershapes at their hearts. In the past, these societies' greatest architectural works almost invariably featured elaborate watershapes that bespoke their technical skills as well as a general love affair with the beauty, luxury and necessity of water. With new developments burgeoning across much of the Middle East these days, fountains and watershapes of all varieties are once again playing important roles in design as
The shopping mall as we know it first emerged in the United States in the 1960s and since then has become a dominating retail presence on both the urban and suburban scenes. They started out in larger cities but soon were found just about everywhere - indoors or outdoors, small and large, visually appealing and, well, less visually appealing. Some are organized around upscale shopping and recreational activities, others around discount centers and manufacturers' outlets. There are many that are filled with mom-and-pop boutiques, while a few are integrated with amusement parks. Whatever seems likely to succeed, mall developers have certainly been willing to give it a whirl. At their core, however, every mall of any type has the primary mission of pulling people together so they can spend money on all kinds of merchandise; all the entertainment, dining and socializing are, in other words, secondary activities. In this sense, today's retail forums are a modern version of marketplace traditions that reach back to ancient times and almost every human society - with lots of modern conveniences added for good measure. Today's malls, in fact, are
When we work in public settings, the basic demand on lighting designers is for straightforward fixture layouts capable of providing enduring effects and requiring minimal ongoing attention. That doesn't sound particularly exciting - and it's not, unless the lighting designer uses it as a baseline and reaches above and beyond.Parks, plazas, resorts and historical sites (among many others) are all spaces that really should come alive at night, but their lighting designs often run counter to that vitality by being so utilitarian that they spark boredom rather than energy. It's easy to understand why this happens: Because such spaces play host to high levels of traffic and often multiple uses, they demand lighting treatments that
When we work in public settings, the basic demand on lighting designers is for straightforward fixture layouts capable of providing enduring effects and requiring minimal ongoing attention. That doesn't sound particularly exciting - and it's not, unless the lighting designer uses it as a baseline and reaches above and beyond.Parks, plazas, resorts and historical sites (among many others) are all spaces that really should come alive at night, but their lighting designs often run counter to that vitality by being so utilitarian that they spark boredom rather than energy. It's easy to understand why this happens: Because such spaces play host to high levels of traffic and often multiple uses, they demand lighting treatments that
