{design of City Garden showing art locations and features}
ArchNewsNow.com offers what I think is the best description of City Garden that I’ve come across. The post headline is directly from the ArchNewsNow story and reflects what many of us believe, that the Gateway Mall is not just another park or just another public space, but must be an integral part of downtown’s overall urban plan.
And by all accounts, City Garden has met with enthusiastic approval. The best endorsement I have heard so far is that it’s the only example of an artist’s rendering matching the final project-person walking their dog, kids playing in the fountain, bicycling guy and all! And that’s about as good as it gets.
A lot is being written about the new park and one does not necessarily need to understand the exhaustive planning that went into this space to appreciate it, but it’s hardly helpful to simply hear that it’s a collection of art.
Here’s a small excerpt from their story:
Defining the border between the upland band and the low, grassy “floodplain” is the 550-foot long arc wall. Made of Missouri limestone evoking the bluffs of the nearby rivers, the arc wall traces a dramatic but graceful curve across both of Citygarden’s two blocks. Gaps allow for pedestrian and vehicular access as well as uninterrupted sight lines. A portion in the western section serves as the frame for the video wall. In the eastern section, the wall bends through a long, split water basin, in which an elevation change at the midpoint creates a six-foot waterfall. Muffling the nearby street noise, the splash helps to create a tranquil and intimate space. At the base of the waterfall, limestone boulders seemingly “eroded” from the arc wall “bluff” provide stepping stones across the basin.
Read the whole story here.
{pre-construction rendering of City Garden}
