Embedded Files
Concept
Figure 1. Shows the view through the PRT track columns. This view encompasses the length of the project.
Figure 2. This displays the entrance to a Chinese garden. Notice how it acts as not only an entrance from one space to another, but as a framing tool. With its bold circular form, it frames a miniature landscape that symbolizes mountains, forests, and oceans in a typically eastern fashion.
Figure 3. To put the process into words, I was looking at the space between the columns as not just shelter, but as a gateway. It marks an edge and a transition from one level to another and frames the river, hills, and bridge that lie just outside. Gateways serve all of these purposes simultaneously. With them, we can not only mark a space, but tell a story.
Development
The narrative I found suitable to tell through this landscape was one of man's history of design and its interaction with nature. The site's entrance is at street level. From there the pedestrian can pass through the entrance gate to be lowered into the park. The first gate he's presented with takes him through a purely natural space mimicking a forest. The plant forms here are showy and picturesque. As he passes through the next gate, he finds the path beneath him has changed to cobblestone to mark the early development of man's design. Through the next gate the materiality shifts to concrete paving to match the gates. The planting now takes an upright and axial form. Exemplary of French formalist garden design. Just before he enters the underpass of the PRT, he passes through a tunnel-like pergola. The space then releases into the mammoth underpass framing the river and the hills just behind.
In the penultimate phase in this progression, the pedestrian enters a two story terraced concrete shelter. The two stories are connected by a stairway that connects down to the rail trail. This shelter is punctuated by a wideset concrete gate that leaves him at the Rail Trail, and beckons passersby to stop for a rest. At the other side of the trail another gate waves the pedestrian in to see a marriage of natural and synthetic design. A terraced concrete island overhangs a sewage outlet to obstruct its scent to the rest of the site. Around it, phytogenic planting (Willows and hollies) was chosen that performs well in moisture rich soil so as to soak up what would otherwise be stagnant sewage water. Boxwood clusters are sprinkled about here as well. Their form is hedged and formal like man's earlier phase of design, but their scent is used here to mask the sewage.
As a practical consideration, The site is divided by a parking lot connection towards the street level as it runs the length of the lot. On that stretch between the connective asphalt and the stone retaining wall that holds up the sidewalk, I placed a shaded seating area to frame the whole project.
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