LOCATION: Louisville, KY
CONSTRUCTION COST: $99,000,000
STATUS: Master Plan completed 2009
OVERVIEW: Riverview Park is envisioned as a new recreational venue for the community of southwest Louisville that celebrates a unique, diverse landscape along the Ohio River. Located at the convergence of several pre-existing man-made site features that include a levee, a railroad line, and a single access road, the new park is organized to re-connect the surrounding community with the river through four distinct landscape characteristics: active, civic, natural, and playful.
Within this landscape, two components are organized to reinforce an experiential, narrative understanding of the park: 1) interactive nodes and 2) park shelters. Together, these elements offer a framework to engage the river & land through site-specific encounters that reveal or amplify environmental phenomena, including river fluctuations, wetland cycles, riverbank topography, and contrasts between natural & manmade landscapes. Influenced by regional and site-specific precedents, these architectural components of the park present playful elements that are both familiar and new.
SITE ORGANIZATION
Interactive “nodes” and park shelters are dispersed throughout the four distinct environments within the park (active, playful, civic and natural) to reinforce an experiential narrative of the landscape.
PRELIMINARY DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS
The transformative qualities of the landscape (seasonal cycles, river fluctuations, day & night, etc.) are celebrated through interactive journeys and experiences that complement & enhance natural phenomena.
EDGE CROSSING
Traversing through three different landscape environments within the park (woods, clearings, and riverbank), the Edge Crossing provides a unique opportunity for park visitors to engage a river edge that is in constant flux. From a simple park path, the interactive journey transforms into an elevated pedestrian trail that gently rises and falls in relation to the rolling terrain. Tracing a path line that evokes imagery of “skipping stones” or “casting a fishing line”, the ADA-accessible journey navigates through a hilltop clearing, into the treetops, and culminates in a gradual descent to a cantilevered overlook at the river’s edge. Set within a protective concrete base, the movable “gangway” overlook can be folded up during periods of flood, forming a vertical marker in the landscape.
MARSH CROSSING
Within a natural wetland area of the park, the Marsh Crossing is an interactive trail that encourages exploration of a wooded environment with cyclical periods of wet & dry conditions. Hovering just above the wetland floor, two curving elevated paths converge to provide a series of observation areas for plant & wildlife. Because of their proximity to the existing topography, the raised walkways become a datum to reveal subtle changes in the landscape between wet & dry cycles, and reinforce a connection to the transformative nature of this particular environment.
PARK SHELTERS
[Baseline Barns, Play Area Shelters, Civic Area Shelters, Nature Area Shelters]
Referencing the historically agrarian use of the land, the design concept for the park shelters originates from the familiar imagery of black pitch tobacco barns common throughout the region. Traditionally viewed as “containers” for crop storage, they are the land-based counterparts to the river barge traffic frequently visible from the park. With this aesthetic vocabulary, the park shelters are dispersed throughout the park as playful yet recognizable markers in the landscape.
In order to establish a cohesive link between the various park zones, the park shelters are grouped into building “variants”, each becoming specific to the particular use and character of the park landscape. Beginning with a conceptual “origin” barn that has been fragmented and distributed throughout the various park zones, each shelter offers a unique relationship to the origin barn through orientation, materials, skin patterning and shape.
Analogous to the transformative qualities of the natural landscape, the park shelters are designed to shift in their visual presence within the park: by day they are solid elements in the land; by night they transform into glowing lanterns.
BASELINE BARN
The Baseline Barn is the originating building from which all the other park shelters are derived. With an overall footprint containing the entire program square footage required for the park, various building components are “subtracted” volumetrically from this base structure and dispersed throughout the landscape. Grounded on physical shift lines that determine areas of mass & void between the primary (origin) building and dispersed outbuildings, the relationships between the separated structures emphasize implied thresholds & connections between park zones. The delineation of building geometries & detailing of material surfaces reinforce a conceptual link between all park structures.
Alluding to the multiple bridges crossing the Ohio River, series of “folded” metal bridges provide playful thresholds into the Play Area & Splash Park.