CityGarden, St. Louis, Missouri
CityGarden
Image from www.urbanophile.com

 

Project Background

CityGarden is a new sculpture garden and park in St. Louis designed by Nelson Byrd Woltz of Charlottesville, Virginia, in partnership with the City of St Louis and funded by the St. Louis-based Gateway Foundation.  CityGarden, which opened on July 1, 2009, extends over two formerly vacant blocks on the Gateway Mall.  The project originated in 1999 as part of the master plan for downtown St. Louis developed by the non-profit group Downtown Now.  

Vision

The design of CityGarden represents the intersection of nature, art, and civic life within the St. Louis landscape. The park itself is designed to represent the St. Louis landscape and the natural processes that shape it.  The main inspiration for the park’s landscape is the Mississippi River, whose banks are only a few blocks away. The site is designed to evoke images of how rivers have shaped the landscape throughout history. The processes of water that shape the landscape and, as a consequence, urban form, are the inspiration for CityGarden’s design.

Design

The design of the park is connected to water through two main features: the landscape, which is modeled after the landscape surrounding rivers, and the park’s fountains.

Landscape

The design of the park’s landscape is intended to evoke river landscapes, and, in particular, that of the Mississippi River, which runs only a few blocks to the east of the site. The park is divided into three bands running east to west. The northern band represents the river bluffs, the middle band represents the floodplain, and the southern band represents the cultivated river terrace. The three bands are separated by a long curved wall to the north and a low meandering wall in the south.

Map of CityGarden
Image from www.citygardenst.org

 

 

Fountains

The park contains three fountains; each has a distinct design intended to offer different experiences of water’s role in the landscape. The two larger fountains in the north-east and south-west sections of the park are designed with special consideration to the experience of water.
           

The largest fountain is located in the north-east quadrant of the site, on the border between the northern and central bands of the park. The fountain consists of two split-level basins separated by a six-foot drop. The upper basin is a large reflective pool that features Aristide Maillol’s sculpture “La Riviere”, which represents the personification of water. The water flows out of the reflecting pool into the lower basin, which contains stepping stones that invite people to move through and interact with the fountain. 

Split-basin fountain "La Riviere" by Maillol
Image from stlcommercemagazine.com image from www.citygardenstl.gov

 

The second fountain is the play fountain in the south-eastern quadrant of the park, the southern boundary of which is the meandering wall on the southern border of the central band of the park. The play fountain consists of 102 nozzles arranged in a grid, each of which can shoot water as high as six feet into the air. A computer system controls the constantly changing patterns created by the water throughout the day and night. The water used in this part of the fountain flows into an underground reservoir, which filters and cleans the water using minimal chlorine and chemicals, and then re-circulates the water through the fountain. Thus, the system is designed not to waste water. To the side of this fountain is a small, one-inch deep pool of water that contains “Voyage” by Jean-Michel Folon. 

Play Fountain "Voyage" by Folon
Image from www.msnbc.msm.com Image from www.citygardenstl.gov

 

 

Analysis

Despite the design concepts that are closely tied to the role of water within the St. Louis landscape, the actual design does not seem to do a good job of communicating these concepts to the public.
           

The concepts that contribute to the physical design and layout of the space create interesting parallels to the relationship between the city’s topography and its rivers.  Many elements of the park are probably successful as far as creating symbols that evoke images of water. For example, the meandering wall that separates the central and southern bands of the park is an unmistakable reference to the path of an evolving river.  However, while specific design elements, such as the meandering wall, evoke images of water, it is not clear that the connection of the landscape as a whole to the river landscape of the Mississippi River is communicated to the people using the space.  Using a bird’s eye view of the entire park, the separation of the three bands, and how various design elements fit into the three spaces, is easy to read. However, the effect of this design is probably very different on the ground. Thus, while the landscape design makes an interesting attempt to reflect water’s role in the landscape, the best it can do is evoke imagery that may or may not help an individual to connect to the broader concepts that drive the site’s design.
           

While the features of the landscape do fit into the design concepts of communicating how water has shaped the St. Louis landscape, the functionality of the fountains does not relate at all to the driving conceptual aspects of the park.  Neither fountain exposes urban water processes or acts in a particularly natural way.


Despite the aspiration of creating an environmentally friendly and sustainable park, the fountains do not reflect these goals and do not use water art as a way to engage the public in how water processes shape the city.
           

Like the Atelier Dreiseitl case studies, the CityGarden is successful only as far as creating an interesting and unique public space within the city.  Because the design uses new design ideas and approaches to meaningful public space, the CityGarden is able to encourage public use and, therefore, has become a well used public space in the city. However, the design misses opportunities to contribute to ecological design by using permanent water features that do not relate to the vision of a sustainable and ecologically sensitive park.