Markku Rainer Peltonen
DuSable
Park Proposal Project
When Jean
Baptiste Pointe DuSable came to the north of today’s Chicago area
the land was still untouched. He was a man from a multicultural background
who was married to a native Potawatomi woman. With his unprejudiced mind
he wanted to create a new place where one could spend a good and peaceful
time.
This proposal
links up with DuSable’s plans and also intends to provide a place
to find and see something new. It is meant to offer a variety of spaces
and possibilities where people from different backgrounds can meet. In
addition, the park should also offer the possibility to withdraw from
the city noise and find calm and rest.
Curved steel
walls will be installed which provide new spaces and different natural
rooms. These spaces are to be used and frequented by individuals as well
as groups. At the same time, the walls are sculptures that stand for themselves.
Following the natural layout of DuSable Park, meandering around the peninsula
the visitors will get new views with each wall opening to another panorama.
The waterfront
gets a new look with the space expanding across the shoreline between
the steel walls. The relations between the inside and the outside of the
park will be newly defined and the visitors will get the feeling of being
in a new surrounding with a novel atmosphere set between land and water.
The park’s vegetation should gradually evolve. At first, there will only be a couple of trees in the middle of the park creating the impression of a meadow. Then, after some time, more trees should be planted depending on how the visitors accept the place and if people want it, the park’s vegetations could later change to become more of a wilderness again.
Markku
Rainer Peltonen
Berlin, Germany