{"id":417448,"date":"2010-03-11T16:22:03","date_gmt":"2010-03-11T21:22:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dirt.asla.org\/?p=4076"},"modified":"2010-03-11T16:22:03","modified_gmt":"2010-03-11T21:22:03","slug":"field-operations-will-design-santa-monica-town-square","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/417448","title":{"rendered":"Field Operations Will Design Santa Monica Town Square"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nJames Corner and Field Operations<\/a> won the design competition\u00a0to design Santa Monica’s new\u00a0Town Square and Palisades\u00a0Garden Walk (see earlier post on the competition<\/a>).\u00a0According to The Architect’s Newspaper<\/a><\/em>, the seven-acre park\u00a0will connect the\u00a0city’s Civic Center with the rest of\u00a0Santa Monica.\u00a0Barbara Stinchfield, Santa Monica\u2019s Director of Community and Cultural Services said Field Operations won because of its “commitment to making places for people.\u00a0It\u2019s [about]\u00a0their dedication to sustainability and public art and engaging the community.\u201d<\/p>\n

The one-acre Town Square part of the park will\u00a0be reserved for cultural and civic events, while the six-acre Palisades Garden Walk will\u00a0display the city’s\u00a0”unique cultural and horticultural offerings, including a botanical element and water features.” Streetscape improvements will include more pedestrian and bike lanes designed to connect the park with downtown.<\/p>\n

Lisa Switkin, an\u00a0associate principal at\u00a0Field Operations told The Architect’s Newspaper<\/em> that\u00a0the firm is now examining the “site\u2019s historic significance, its local plant life, its bluffs and dunes, its significant grade changes, and even its nearby freeway interchange.”<\/p>\n

Christopher Hawthorne, architecture critic for the L.A. Times<\/a><\/em> adds that the park development work is just a piece of broader development plans for Santa Monica. The goal is to effectively apply\u00a0smart growth strategies to the area. “Bringing together transit, contemporary architecture and design, open space, housing and pedestrian amenities, the Santa Monica effort is a rare example of integrated, comprehensive planning in a region struggling to wean itself from dependence on the car and create spaces for genuine public engagement. It is also a sign of how smart cities are leveraging the construction of new transit lines to pursue a broad range of improvements.”<\/p>\n

Hawthorne is also confident Field Operations’s\u00a0ability to\u00a0innovate\u00a0won’t be hamstrung by infrastructural challenges. “In Santa Monica, Corner and his competitors were able to anticipate the arrival of the light-rail station and consider the potential capping of the freeway without, crucially, having to worry about actually designing — or reserving money — for those infrastructural elements. Now that Corner’s firm has won the commission, he will be able to pursue an ambitious, even freewheeling design that also happens to slot satisfyingly into a larger civic plan.”<\/p>\n

Some\u00a0$25 million in redevelopment agency funds will be used for the project. Construction\u00a0is expected to begin in\u00a02012.<\/p>\n

Read the article <\/a><\/p>\n

Image credit: The Architect’s Newspaper \/ Field Operations<\/em><\/p>\n

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James Corner and Field Operations won the design competition\u00a0to design Santa Monica’s new\u00a0Town Square and Palisades\u00a0Garden Walk (see earlier post on the competition).\u00a0According to The Architect’s Newspaper, the seven-acre park\u00a0will connect the\u00a0city’s Civic Center with the rest of\u00a0Santa Monica.\u00a0Barbara Stinchfield, Santa Monica\u2019s Director of Community and Cultural Services said Field Operations won because of its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-417448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=417448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417448\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=417448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=417448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=417448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}