American Society of Landscape Architects ASLA 2006 Student Awards
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GENERAL DESIGN AWARD OF HONOR

Dancing Field Interwoven Construct
Su-Jung Park, Student ASLA
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Faculty Advisor(s): Keith Kaseman and Julie Beckman


"A beautiful topographic strategy. The program deals with changing activities over time and demonstrates very mature spatial understanding."

— 2006 Student Awards Jury Comments

This project site is the children's Island in Prague, Czech. This studio work provides an arena within which strategic exploration and iterative development combined with an arsenal of digital tools will culminate in the conceptualization, clarification, visualization, fabrication and construction of a comprehensively developed and defined children's Island. As such, comprehensive strategies for the implementation of strategic programmatic components will be iteratively developed, each iteration to be communicated with great clarity. This project will operate with a rigorous approach to programmatic syntheses, material details, fabrication and construction of synthetic landscapes.

What should the children's island be? It should be a flexible organic creature for all generations. My design goal is to create an exciting field with dynamic ground surfaces like dancing feature. Dancing field is a unique park because it is strange and unpredictable. This land will lead full of exciting activities. In terms of physical system, I employed building diverse volume and tension on the existing flat site as well as increasing accessibility. Weaving structures between neighborhood and island enables the use of land to maximize.

This design started from the observation of the material characteristic of rubber by using physical models. Through the experiments with rubber, I came up with simple surfaces to employ a design rule. I used a bingo game to create unique design terms and information. It was possible to make different plan scenarios with the bingo game. The combination of a bingo game transformed site plan diagrams. All of scenarios could be developed programmed landscape design according to the site condition and design intentions.

Among several plan scenarios, I chose one that is the most appropriate to the design goals. I proposed extending a sidewalk of current urban fabric and connecting the sidewalk surface with the island. There are two primary program spaces on the ground level. One is dancing field focused on dynamic field sport such as extreme sports. The other one is flat field to enjoy field sports including soccer game, grid game fields such as chess, domino, or checkers.

 

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