Collaboration with Public Artists

At GreenWorks, we craft designs that capture and share the story of a place. For this reason, we frequently collaborate with artists on projects across market sectors, including parks, habitat, urban design, and transportation. Recent projects that have involved public artists include Denver Avenue Streetscape Project, Westmoreland Park Nature Based Play Area, and Clay Street Green Street.

The Westmoreland Park Nature-Based Play Area design team included environmental artist, Adam Kuby. Adam collaborated with the design team on the overall conceptual design of the playground theme and layout that represents the restoration of the adjacent Crystal Springs. Not only did he help envision these artistic elements as play features within the design, Adam was also contracted to install the log and boulder climbers to ensure the execution met the design intent.

For Metro’s Canemah Bluff Overlook, we were asked to incorporate art subtly into the design that reflected the site’s natural history. Artist and landscape architect, Caitilin Pope-Daum prepared realistic ink sketches of local flora and fauna unique to the oak savannah including the Nuthatch bird, Camas wildflower, and Oregon White Oak leaf. Mauricio Saldana was the stone carver.

The Khunamokwst Park project benefited from its multi-disciplinary team that included artist Valerie Otani. Public engagement was extensive and included diverse stakeholder groups and community-based organizations. In a series of after-school activities, GreenWorks and Valerie worked with students from the Cully neighborhood to engage them in the process and teach them about park design. The design included a large stone carving of a Douglas fir cone which Mauricio Saldana carved and was incorporated into the playground as a climbing feature.

Art was incorporated as a measure to improve the pedestrian experience in Clay Street Green Street. The “Log Dog” art, by Linda M. Wysong, celebrate the district’s industrial history. Much smaller versions of the Log Dog were once used to grapple and float logs down the river to mills.

Thank you to all the amazing artists we work with!

Westmoreland Park Adam Kuby

Khunamokwst Park Mauricio Saldana Valerie Otani

Canemah Bluff Mauricio Saldana Caitilin Pope-Daum

Denver Ave Mauricio Saldana Valerie Otani

RiverEast Center Linda Wysong

Clay Street Green Street Linda Wysong

Windscape Pete Beeman

Confluence Site Dedication

The Confluence Project recently held a dedication for the Confluence Listening Circle  at Chief Timothy Park near Clarkston, Washington. Check out the video below to see highlights from the ceremony. You can find out more about the project here.

Dedication Ceremony for Confluence Listening Circle at Chief Timothy Park from Confluence Project on Vimeo.

Westmoreland Recognized by Americans for the Arts

 

Westmoreland Nature-Base Play Area was honored as one of the best public art projects of the year by Americans for the arts. Click here for more details.

What is a Log Dog?

We hear this a lot in reference to the art feature of the Clay Street Green Street project in Portland’s Central Eastside Industrial District (CEID). The Log Dog sculptures incorporated into the Clay Street swales reference and celebrate the district’s industrial past. In the 19th Century, the lumber industry used the Willamette River as a conduit for transporting logs to the lumber mills established along the banks of the river. Logs were tied together into rafts and piloted down the Willamette in massive convoys. These log rafts where chained together by cable that ran through attachments known as log dogs. The historic log dogs were like thick needles, driven into the floating logs before a cable was pulled through the eye and cinched to bundle them together, creating a raft. GreenWorks designed the streetscape for a 12-block section of SE Clay Street. Working with KPFF and artist, Linda M. Wysong, the green street provides a pedestrian friendly corridor from the Ladd’s Addition neighborhood to the Eastbank Esplanade, strengthening connectivity and improving the pedestrian realm. The green street honors the industrial district’s history through the art installations and interpretive elements. GreenWorks has contributed to the redevelopment of Portland’s Central Eastside Industrial District (CEID) over the last decade through improvements to the Clay Street Right of Way / RiverEast pedestrian plaza and most recently with Clay Street Green Street. The completed project provides sustainable environmental benefits, including vegetated stormwater management, pedestrian and bicycle passage, and strategies that maintain freight movement and business activities throughout the CEID.

The project’s artist describes the inspiration on the Clay Street Log Dog: “The Wetlands were filled, the mill erected and a city built. The land is transformed as the water continues to flow. It may seep into the earth or be hidden by stone and concrete, but it continues to connect, sustain and give form to our lives. Honor and protect the river.” Linda M. Wysong, artist

SE Clay Green Street Project

Construction has begun on the SE Clay Street Green Street project! The Green Street spans from SE 2nd Avenue to SE 12th Avenue in Portland’s Central East-Side Industrial District. When completed, it will better connect pedestrians and bicyclists from east-side neighborhoods with the RiverEast Center Plaza (also a GreenWorks project) all the way to Portland’s popular Eastbank Esplanade. The redone renovated? revitalized? street will include storm water curb extensions, storm water planters with railroad rail check dams, and installations from local artist Linda Wysong. Custom seating will be incorporated into the storm water planter walls along the sidewalk edge, giving the corridor a more inviting, pedestrian-oriented feel.

From the beginning, this project posed planning challenges to all parties involved. Integrating stormwater management as well as pedestrian, bicycling and car travel with the project’s industrial freight access requirements resulted in unique designs for storm water curb extensions that respond to the larger turning radii required by some trucks that use the industrial district.

If you’d like to learn more about the SE Clay St Green Street project, click here!

Tanner Springs Park Project 1 of 5 finalists for Urban Land Institute Urban Open Space Award

Atelier Dreiseit and GreenWorks PC recently submitted their Tanner Springs Park project for the Urban Land Institute (ULI) Urban Open Space Award.  The competition recognizes an outstanding example of a well-used public open space that has spurred regeneration and the transformation of its surrounding community. The Atelier Dreiseit and GreenWorks submittal was one of the five finalists selected.

Other finalists include:

• The High Line in New York, N.Y.
• Pier 25 at Tribeca Section of Hudson River Park in New York, N.Y.
• Railroad Park in Birmingham, Alabama
• RiverWalk Urban Waterfront in Calgary, Alberta.

The winner will be announced at ULI’s Fall Meeting and Urban Land Expo, set for October 16 - 19, 2012 in Denver.

Click here for more about the ULI and Award Program.

North Denver Avenue Ribbon Cutting Ceremony

A public celebration was held November 18^th in the downtown Kenton neighborhood of North Portland to mark the completion of streetscape improvements to Kenton’s four block long business district. Community members were joined by Portland Mayor Sam Adams and representatives from the Portland Bureau of Transportation, Portland Development Commission, Kenton Neighborhood Association, Kenton Business Association and Regional Arts & Culture Council and countless others who contributed in one way or another to this project. There was an unveiling of a public art sculpture of carved stone by artist Mauricio Saldana, which now sits prominently on the corner of N. Denver Ave and Kilpatrick St. Phase 2 improvements to the project were completed earlier this fall, which included grinding the existing asphalt pavement and repaving with concrete; a paving process called ultra thin white topping (UTW). Parking and intersections are delineated with dark gray concrete with the travel lanes a natural concrete color. Phase 1 construction work was completed earlier in the year. The complete reconstruction of the pedestrian zone included widened sidewalks, new street trees, stormwater planters that treat road and sidewalk rain runoff, ornamental lighting and carved stone benches. The purpose of this project is to support the continued revitalization of the historic Kenton business district and to make Kenton a safer place.

GreenWorks Leads Streetscape Design Tour in Pendleton

GreenWorks' Mike Faha and Tim Strand led a tour of Pendleton's newly completed streetscape projects as part of the Fall 2010 APWA Conference. The group began the tour at the new US30 / Court / Dorion intersection, which was designed as a landscape gateway and features curvilinear basalt walls and groves of Jacquemonti Birch trees that create a grand sense of arrival to Pendleton's River Quarter District. They then toured the new Round-Up frontage improvements and Centennial Plaza, which features a new Pendleton landmark: a $150,000, 16-foot tall, bronze statue of the iconic Bucking Bronco. They concluded the tour at Pendleton's new Riverfront Park, which was designed to provide a visual and physical connection to the Umatilla River and Parkway trail system. The park also offers a flexible tree-lined plaza space that accommodates vendors during civic events.

Public Art installed at Gresham Center for the Arts Plaza

Four sculptures, by Seattle based artist Claudia Fitch, were installed at the Gresham Center for the Arts Plaza on Thursday Oct. 21^st. The quartet of forms range in height from 18 to 27 feet in height, and serve as colorful beacons at the plaza’s door step.  The work, which Claudia has named FineTunedTule, is based upon the theme of the four arts – visual art, music, literature and dance and is directly inspired by four formal tools/instruments representative of the arts respectively: the paintbrush, the trumpet, the fountain pen and the tutu.

Claudia writes about the work, “I am fascinated by the finely contoured shapes of all these tools (the tulle construction of the tutu being no less precisely delineated). And, like in the verbal pun of the working title, I saw an opportunity in these tool forms to play with their elegant sculptural shapes in a kind of cross referential way, switching functionality with humor, and punning on their visual similarities and differences.”

A public dedication of the public art sculptures will be held Saturday, October 23^rd, 2010 from 11:30 am to 1:30 pm, with formal presentations to begin at 12 noon. All are invited to attend. The plaza is located at 401 NE 2^nd Street, Downtown Gresham.

Construction of this project, designed by GreenWorks, was completed in June of 2009 and serves as the City of Gresham’s living room, where many public events and performances have already been held. The plaza is the first step in realizing a vision for an arts district centered on the plaza.

Oregon City Green Street Construction Nearing Completion

As part of the realignment of Warner-Milne Road at the Molalla Avenue intersection, the City of Oregon City hired a team with GreenWorks to design a rain garden in a vacated portion of the right-of-way that will treat stormwater runoff from the adjacent heavily-travelled roadways. A series of large serpentine Corten steel fins meander through the site, articulating the stormwater channel and creating a striking contrast to the lush rain garden plantings. The first of its kind in Oregon, this rain garden incorporates prominent sculptural elements that highlight the City's committment to sustainability.

The project also consists of various streetscape improvements including new street trees, decorative tree and trench grating, and permeable concrete sidewalks.