Hannan ArtPark

Landscape Architecture & Community Planning – Implementation

Project Narrative

The Hannan ArtPark exemplifies the power of landscape architecture to transform overlooked infrastructure into catalytic public space. What began as a requirement to fulfill parking needs for ArtWorks’ new headquarters in Cincinnati’s Walnut Hills neighborhood became a bold opportunity to stitch together culture, ecology, and community identity—on a site long regarded as vacant, leftover land.

The design challenge: could a required parking lot become a place of creative expression and community life?

The resulting space answers with a resounding yes.

Situated at the convergence of cultural investment and neighborhood momentum, the ArtPark serves as both a functional amenity and a public landmark. A stormwater management requirement became an artistic opportunity. Inspired by the adjacent mural’s pixelated, paint-by-number trees, permeable pavers form a patterned ground plane that echoes the mural’s geometry—visually and conceptually linking the surface and the wall. Drone imagery was used to ensure construction precisely matched the design intent, reinforcing the ArtPark’s identity as a living artwork.

The landscape architect led all phases of planning and design, grounded in five guiding goals: amplify Walnut Hills' unique character; establish a visible and memorable gateway; integrate community-focused, adaptable programming; embed art and ecology throughout; and catalyze neighborhood-wide transformation.

Native and pollinator-friendly gardens frame the park and extend the tree canopy across the site. Subtle, undulating concrete walls sculpt the edge, evoking the contours of Walnut Hills and providing seating, enclosure, and a sense of embrace. These forms—realized through meticulous formwork—became artworks themselves.

The park’s layout allows for daily use and event-based flexibility, balancing cars and people through a carefully choreographed spatial framework. From Gilbert Avenue and McMillan Street, visitors are drawn in by curated views and visual rhythm—drawing on compositional principles more common in painting than parking. Far from ornamental, the ArtPark integrates its artistic language into every detail: paving, planting, grading, wall construction, and even drainage. Art is not added after the fact—it is the organizing framework.

Today, the Hannan ArtPark anchors a growing arts corridor that stretches from the Cincinnati Art Museum to Walnut Hills. It is used as a place to gather, celebrate, reflect, and create. It repositions infrastructure as civic gesture, reinvents a vacant lot as a cultural node, and demonstrates how even the most utilitarian land uses can uplift a neighborhood.
This is not just a parking lot. It’s a platform for civic pride.