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PARK/CITY
The urban park is and has always been defined in opposition to the city
it serves. In the 19th century, designed by Olmsted and others as the
natural alternative to an unnatural and unhealthy urban condition, the
park was endowed with the power to redeem the city. We willingly judge
a city by its parks because in them we see a reflection of that city as
we would most like it to be. In Chicago, this illusion persists even as
fewer and fewer residents of the city have the time or the means to actively
visit the parks. The lakeshore- the city’s treasured inheritance-
is used increasingly only by tourists. Chicagoans limit themselves to
a swatch of asphalt as they surge back and forth on foot, bicycles, or
rollerblades. The recreational use of the lakeshore does not create in
the parks destinations, but routes for transportation and exercise.
How can a park better illuminate the boundaries between itself and its
city, between use of space and use of place? How might three acres of
vacant land on the lakeshore give a richer reflection of the city of which
it is a very small part? These questions find themselves reflected if
not solved in my proposal for DuSable Park.
WALLS
Bounded on threes sides by water and a multi-level highway on the fourth,
the site for DuSable Park contains clearly marked boundaries; its character
is distinct from the open plan parks common to the city. An architectural
response to the site was to emphasize the opportunity to enclose the park
by building walls. Containing the park inside of walls became a way of
linking the park back to the city grid that surrounds it.
PARK
The elliptical park derives a sense of order from its traditional geometric
form and serves as an eddy amidst the motion of urban recreation and city
life. Accessible under the highway via an esplanade running to the new
residential developments west of the site, the park is also surrounded
by ramps that define its shape and connect it to pedestrian paths to the
north and south. The centerpiece of the park would be a statue dedicated
to Jean Baptiste Point DuSable. The early pioneer would be honored in
a park now connected to the vitality of the city he helped to found.
GARDEN
Though prominent both by position and access, the park shares the three
acre site with a sprawling group of urban gardens. They surround the park
as openly farmed land and through the multiple greenhouses that frame
the ellipse of the park. It is these gardens that flow beneath the elevated
highway to connect the peninsula to the city. The attempt made is less
to introduce nature back to the city, but instead to activate the park
as a destination by illustrating a series of daily interactions common
to both the garden and the city.
Edward
Baxter
efbaxter@hotmail.com
http://pantheon.yale.edu/~efb8/
(Flash site)