Treatment to the Chaos

Treatment to the chaos in Downtown Seattle

Project: Freeway Park

Location: Boundary North by Union and on the south by Spring Street. East to First Hill, west to the Seattle's financial center.

Observation time: 01/ 18, 2013, Friday, 10:00-12:00am

Participants: Dian (Nikky) Zhang, Xiaoyang Zhu, Yuan (Evan) Lin.

Observation:
1. Context: The park locates in the center of downtown Seattle. The !-5 Freeway and The 8th Ave go through the park. There is a large city-owned parking lot underneath the park. And the boundary is defined by Washington State Convention and Trade Center.
2. Activities: There are 2 main open spaces and many pedestrian made of concrete. in this park. the activities include waling, jogging, gathering, passing through and getting into the building.
3. Plants: In order to reduce the pollution from the freeway, the designer selected some native evergreen shrubs and trees which have a high ability to resist the toxic dirt and noise. There are some other colorful plants to indicate seasonal change.
4. Texture: The artificial part in this park is purely grey concrete, with some obvious red movable chair. Some of the plants would turn yellow and hard, which makes a big contrast between hard and soft. Aesthetically, the interact of each material is well presented.
5. Plans create the space: Most of the plants grow high and dense to enclose the road and define the boundary, while there are also some individual trees with beautiful appearance standing on a wide and flat grass field.

Conclusion:
Freeway Park is a wise design treating the complex context around. The freeway and other streets through the park can also be regarded as a mimic aspect of nature. The project blurs the boundary of what is natural process and what is urban.

Shared Spaces to Connect Spaces

-->
--> -->

One challenge faced by landscape architects is how to connect green spaces within a city. This issue can be especially difficult in dense urban areas such as city centers, or for example, the area near the University of Washington in University District, Seattle. The greenway that connects Green Lake Park with Ravenna Park along NE Ravenna Boulevard is one such space that achieves this goal. Fredrick Law Olmsted designed the greenway in 1903 as part of the grand plan of Seattle's city parks. The thirty-plus foot green lawn that divides the roadway provides an aesthetically appealing connection for the two parks and has evolved over time to be an important space within the neighborhood.

Observations of the greenway on a chilly January day reveal that this is indeed a shared space even in the middle of winter. Drivers on the roadway, bikers, walkers, runners, area residents and business-owners all use it for different purposes. As such, the greenway is certainly an example of city sharing in Seattle. Business owners use the open space to place advertisements in plain sight of passers by. Runners have worn a path in the grass along the tree line from many years of use. The thirty-plus feet of green lawn is wide enough to play with dogs or pass a Frisbee between friends; and bikers, drivers and walkers all use the roadway as well. This greenway along with other shared spaces throughout the city help to create a flow of users from park to park; and therefore increase the functionality of the green spaces within the city as a whole.

By: Darcy Akers and Kenna Patrick