Over the weekend, SCAPE and Studio Gang were in Memphis to celebrate the opening of the new Engagement Center at Tom Lee Park. At the opening, the community was invited to view renderings, animations, and an immersive virtual reality experience of the designs for the new park. Beginning today, the center will be open daily from 9AM to 4:30PM, for visitors to experience and interact with the new designs and learn more about the team’s design process.
Image © Studio Gang
SCAPE’s designs for the park draw inspiration from the river, re-imagining the space as a vibrant and dynamic civic space that fosters positive encounters and civic pride, restores natural ecology and conditions, and better connects the city to the river. As Kate describes, “The dynamic forms of the Mississippi River Basin itself inspired a series of rooms in the park, creating a unique template for diverse civic spaces and ecological revitalization.”
Image © Studio Gang
SCAPE is collaborating with Studio Gang to revitalize Tom Lee Park in Memphis into a signature public park where community life can flourish year-round, grounded in the Mississippi River’s dynamic rhythms and local ecology.
Image © Studio Gang
For the new park, architecture and landscape work closely together to make the park a welcoming, comfortable place for all Memphians and visitors, whether they’re taking part in outdoor activities or relaxing alongside the Mississippi. The park’s 30 acres are laid out as a series of four distinct zones—defined by topography, vegetation, pathways, and architecture—that flow together to support a range of active and passive uses. The landscape design of each zone is informed by different natural river formations or behaviors. The curving, intersecting paths and topography of “The Riffle,” for example, serve as an organic crossroads at the park’s center that’s threaded through with soft, shaded places to rest and watch busier activity go by. Some of these planted areas also function as bioswales that collect and filter stormwater—one example of the natural infrastructure systems woven into the design. Throughout the park, regionally-specific plant species are selected to provide shade and beauty for people as well as habitat for wildlife. Hearty and well-adapted to life at the Mississippi’s edge, these trees, shrubs, and other plants make the park an ever-changing place that marks the passage of the seasons.
Image © Studio Gang
Tom Lee Park was one of the five zones included in Studio Gang’s 2017 Memphis Riverfront master plan for six miles of the city’s Mississippi riverfront that was shaped through a series of community engagement workshops, meetings, interviews, and surveys. The park’s design was developed over a long period of consultation with community groups, including key park stakeholders, and incorporates the ideas and input from more than 4,000 voices. The new Tom Lee Park design aims to honor and elevate their ambitions for Memphis’s future by connecting the city back to its starting point–the Mississippi River.
Image © Studio Gang
News courtesy of SCAPE