Designing and constructing a public park is an enormously complex undertaking. Shoreline Park in Oakland, California, is one type of fruit that falls from these trees of bureaucratic messiness.
The backstory: This park was paid for by the Port of Oakland, initially operated by the East Bay Municipal and Utility Department, but at the end of 2010 the maintenance was turned back over to the Port of Oakland for financial reasons. And now that I've acknowledged these design destroying entanglements, I will now proceed to judge the crap out of it.
There are aspects of this park that are deftly executed and thoughtful, and others that "hurt me."
Incorporating the history of a site into its future design is oftentimes totally ugh, and this site is no exception, as it spews historical significance. Native peoples once hunted here (check), a train ran through here (check), people worked here (check), boats came here (check), wetlands were destroyed here (check) and so on and so forth.
It is situated in one of the most breathtaking notches in the San Francisco bay coastline. Port cranes border it on one side, it backs up to a container yard, and it peers into the guts of the Bay Bridge. Despite all this present-day bodaciousness, the park's designers curiously decided to embrace the past rather than the infrastructural magnificence that now surrounds it. The views and location were simply freebies. But the design of the park dwells on its history as a WWII supply depot and the fact it was once the end of the cross continental railroad- and does so through tired and trivial landscape features. Old ship bollards serve as points along a path, a structural vestige (which as an object, is magnificent) of previous buildings are now the site for picnics, etc.
This landscape fundamentally disappoints at levels macro and micro. Macro: there is just way too much fucking grass, which is curious, because besides the grass, most of the plant material selection was thoughtful, coastal, and native. These disparate ideologies are self-contradicting and upset me. Pick a side, and stick with it. The salt in the wound is that all of this grass is now completely covered in excrement from Canadian Geese, so even if someone wanted to partake in a sportingly activity, they wouldn't, because they'd get poopy shoes. In trying to appease the ability of the park to be both ecologically sensitive and a place for sports, the design lost its identity and its ability to actually communicate with the user.
Micro: the construction details just aren't there. The benches are store bought and look exactly so. Though I'm sure a whipping coastal wind is an issue here, it wasn't considered with enough diligence and entire tree rows are crooked in the same direction. On planted berms some species have thrived and others have perished completely, leaving bald patches scattered throughout. And the informational kiosks are completely empty, a free metaphor that I'll grab on and use as a symbol of this park's deep down emptiness. There is nothing new to learn here.
Sigh.
Where the park succeeds and pleases is in the wetlands, which appear from the few times I've visited, to be thriving. They melt with the sunset as only wetlands can do, and appear to be home to countless bird species from my pedestrian birding eyes. And the scale, the size of land given to make the park- whoever fought for this deserves a hearty slap on the back. Its bigness and extreme horizontality provide a formidable plateau upon which to gaze out. A horizon line this wide in the East Bay is few and far between, and it is simply delicious.
"What about the port?" you cry, dear reader? I know, I know, it's a shame. The plan literally turns its back to it- the one vehicular road in the park bisects the connection between the park and the container yard, severing it like an untrained surgeon. To observe the container ships arrive and watch the cranes unload them is truly a grand spectacle, undoubtedly impressive to adults and children alike. The simple and profound pleasure of observation is an afterthought in the design. If only this park had layered the ecological and shipping infrastructures as it could have, it might have become the sublime hallucination of a landscape that it only hints at as it stands now.
No comments:
Post a Comment