Peter Walker: Kiel Plaza

This is something else, I was searching for some case studies that illustrate unique designs for plaza's, and i came up with this one. A state of art, a really inviting space that attracts people. Triangle Park in downtown Saint Louis, Missori, is design by Peter Walker and completed 1999.

This project is an attempt to achieve the presence of the great historic Baroque water and light displays in modern terms and with modern means. A gift to the City of St. Louis from the Gateway Foundation, the park provides plaza space for the Kiel Center, a sports, concert, and convention venue that was unfortunately designed without adjacent outdoor space. A path connects the plaza portion of the park to a new rapid-transit station at the bottom of a gentle hill. Along the path are a series of cast-stone benches with path lights.  

The semicircular street-side plaza, which also acts as a gateway to the arena, is formed by ten large fog-walls, fourteen feet by fourteen feet by three feet. Each consists of a sandblasted stainless steel frame covered by thirty-six panels of punched stainless steel plates. In addition to a manifold for a mist fountain, each tablet contains an armature of colored fluorescent lights. The yellow, blue, and red lights can be programmed to produce solid colors, stripes, and secondary colors as well as the colors of home or visiting athletic teams; they can also be choreographed for various seasonal celebrations. At night the fog at the center and the colored light at the edges merge in a magic blur, a radiating presence slightly obscured by the perforated scrim of the plates.

Peter Walker is one of my favorite landscape architect, please click here if you are intrested in visitng his website.