The Plinth Art Park

Landscape Architecture & Community Planning - Planning & Analysis Projects

Project Narrative

The Art Park near Hauck Gardens is conceived as a large-scale, immersive experience of public art for a carefully curated group of local and international artists. The brainchild of local artist and curator Michael Coppage, the park itself becomes a canvas on which artists can exhibit their work, and the public can enjoy it.

Responding to the site's natural topography and accessible circulation patterns, the art park creates a rhythm of terraces that become plinths to showcase the work. These plinths are delicately woven into the landscape, allowing for a free flow of viewers to meander between them and along the primary axis that unites the plinths with the natural lawn to the east. At the north end of the park is a multi-purpose shelter that offers services like public restrooms and a rental space for parties and events. Adjacent to the shelter is a trellised outdoor space that shades a plaza where the public can gather for outdoor events and view the terraced plinths from a shaded area.

The shelter and its roof are conceived of as a series of interconnected wooden blocks, drawing on the traditional materiality of a pergola, but incorporated in a modern way to create a dynamic composition that filters the light in a truly unique way.