Grand Junction Park and Plaza

Honor Award

General Design

Westfield, Indiana, United States
DAVID RUBIN Land Collective
Client: City of Westfield

Climate Crisis Resiliency, Stormwater Management, and Riparian Corridor Reparation Meets Social Overlay

Grand Junction resolved severe degradation due to the Swamp Act of 1850 and reconnects citizens of Westfield, IN, to their natural resources.

Image Credit: Alan Karchmer
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Riparian Restoration Meets Social Overlay

Restoring Cool Creek to its pre-Swamp Act profile, the park mitigates climate challenges while supporting social wellbeing.

Image Credit: Photography - Alan Karchmer; Diagram - DAVID RUBIN Land Collective
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Riparian Restoration Meets Social Overlay

Able to withstand inundation during natural flooding processes, the Wetland Amphitheater is a resilient feature that supports social engagement.

Image Credit: Alan Karchmer
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Setting the Stage

Tiered seating focuses on Cool Creek as “river theater,” establishing the waterway as a character in every performance and gathering.

Image Credit: Alan Karchmer
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Holistic Stormwater Solutions

Designed for performance and aesthetics, the weir overflow slows water during severe floods while incorporating identity rich pixelated limestone.

Image Credit: Photography: Alan Karchmer; Diagram: DAVID RUBIN Land Collective
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Holistic Stormwater Solutions

The bridge underpass serves as social conduit and matriculation point, allowing gathering along the creek edge for exploration and discovery.

Image Credit: Alan Karchmer
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A Community Amenity

What was once a ditch is now an engaging amenity. Cool Creek’s new verdant riparian edge is home to schools of fish, muskrats, and youthful curiosity.

Image Credit: Alan Karchmer
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A New Central Park

Grand Junction unifies five trails into a common amenity node, positioning the city’s neighborhoods in dialogue and uniting neighbors and friends.

Image Credit: DAVID RUBIN Land Collective
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Where Trail Meets Park

Home to the future Trailhead Pavilion, the flexible and welcoming Meadow Overlook provides opportunities for rest, people-watching, and active play.

Image Credit: Alan Karchmer
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Making Identity Visible

Grand Junction’s signature pavilions express the region’s northern limestone extents and serve as folly focal points and program rich content.

Image Credit: Alan Karchmer
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Making Identity Visible

The architectural expression of the pavilions is rooted in the Jeffersonian Grid and the natural outcrops of limestone deposits.

Image Credit: HWKN and DAVID RUBIN Land Collective
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Making Identity Visible

At the edge of the performance lawn, pavilion meets riparian corridor. Both work on behalf of Westfield’s growing identity.

Image Credit: Alan Karchmer
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Making Identity Visible

Each of the pavilions is part of a larger implied square, pulled apart to inform pavilion expressions and their distinct programming.

Image Credit: Alan Karchmer
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A Program Rich Landscape

Grand Junction Plaza features a cafe and skate rental pavilion, as well as engaged fountains for summer play and an ice loop for winter skating.

Image Credit: Hadley Fruits
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A Program Rich Landscape

The cafe pavilion is a beacon of light through the evening hours for social engagement establishing a signature language emblematic of the park.

Image Credit: Alan Karchmer
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A Socially Engaging Landscape Throughout the Seasons

Grand Junction reflects 21st century civic ideals, safeguarding social engagement through integrated infrastructure and resilient landscapes.

Image Credit: City of Westfield
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“

Good to see green infrastructure that is well-loved, inclusive, and welcoming to a mix of people. The project addresses stormwater management through new and dynamic landscapes that captivate users’ curiosity while framing views and providing programming for the community.

”

- 2023 Awards Jury

Project Credits

HWKN Architecture, Design Architect

RATIO, Architect of Record

Bruce Mau Design, Graphics, Wayfinding, and Identity

Flatland Resources, Stream Restoration & Hydrology

Tillett Lighting, Lighting Design

KJWW, MEP Engineer

Lochmueller, Civil Engineer

Laufs Engineering Design, LLC, Structural & Facade Engineer

Fink Roberts & Petrie, Inc., Structural & Site Engineer

ETM Associates, Maintenance and Operations

Wilson Consulting, Specifications

RTM, Code Consultant

Stantec, Fountain and Ice Rink

Project Statement

Grand Junction overlays strategic infrastructure with communal amenity, creating a socially-purposeful, environmentally-resilient, and inclusive park in Westfield, Indiana. Following a 500-year storm event, what was to be a 7.8-acre civic park suddenly required a stormwater infrastructure solution. To resolve the threat of flooding, Cool Creek, which bifurcates the site, required stabilization and repair of its channelized profile. The park is now once again celebrated as a verdant setting where citizens can engage with the creek and each other.

Project Narrative

In response to a significant flood event that inundated the town, increased vulnerability from the escalating climate crisis, and an aspiration for recognition as a design-forward town, the City of Westfield, Indiana, has overlaid strategic infrastructure with communal purpose to create a socially-purposeful, environmentally-resilient, and inclusive park focused on human engagement. Grand Junction acknowledges Westfield as a nascent, northern complement to Indiana’s modernist mecca, Columbus, as it addresses climate change, stormwater management, and riparian corridor reparation with design excellence for a new people-forward park.

Two weeks following the landscape architect’s selection to design the city’s new 7.8-acre downtown park, a 500-year storm event flooded the burgeoning hamlet. What was to be a civic park for citizens to gather suddenly required a stormwater infrastructure solution. To resolve the threat of flooding, Cool Creek, which bifurcates the park site, required stabilization and repair of its channelized profile. Today, the creek is once again a feature of the City as it once was celebrated in documents pre-1850, which described a town where citizens could engage with the creek and each other in a verdant setting.

The beauty of Grand Junction’s resiliency is not just in the newly repaired riparian corridor, but also the ways in which the static engineered systems are wholly integrated through design. For example, the weir which tempers any overflow water during increasingly significant storm events is as much iconic play structure as it is efficient engineering. Now, when the 48” pipe which funnels Grassy Branch into the park is over capacity, the water fills the southern reservoir until it overflows, cascading across the weir’s pixelated, sloped surfaces, creating additional turbulence to slow the flow of water into the park’s southern aperture. It is both efficient and beautiful in its character with or without cascading stormwater present.

Grand Junction’s social overlay adds additional resiliency to the infrastructure that makes this central park possible. Repeat community engagement ensuring identity and accessibility were woven into the park’s composition. With an aspiration to be recognized nationally for a design-forward park, gatherings focused not just on park partis, but on how to extend the symbolic hand in greeting – an acknowledgement of the City's Quaker roots, and an invitation to participate to all.

With this unique approach, a new park was created with and for the citizens of Westfield and their friends around which downtown development will grow. Built where five trails converge alongside Cool Creek, it has not taken long for Grand Junction to become a place for people to meet, eat, relax, work, and explore. It is home to a café and winter skate rental facility, an ice rink, children’s playground, and in due course, an eye-catching outdoor stage and trailhead pavilion. Redefining an infrastructure project needed for the mitigation of flooding, Grand Junction has come to embrace its new mission: a lively town center park with social overlay. Now, residents can engage with each other and identify in an accessible park uniquely Westfield. Thanks to this design vision, the citizens of Westfield can participate in a more active, experiential, and human-engaged future, together.

Products

Furniture
- Landscapeforms - Studio431
- mmcite
- Forms+Surfaces
- Maglin Site Furniture
Drainage/Erosion
- ACO, Inc.
Fences/Gates/Walls
- Precast Specialties, Inc
- JAG Metal Solutions
Lumber/Decking/Edging
- Border Concepts
Parks/Recreation Equipment
- Kompan
Structures
- Empire Quarry
Hardscape
- Hanover Pavers
- Vermont Structural Slate CompanyKafka Granite
Lighting
- Lithonia Lighting
- Ecosense Lighting
- Lumenpulse
- Beachside Lighting
Other
- Skatestoppers - Skate Deterrents
- Deckmaster - Deck Fastening System
- Permaloc - Asphalt Edge
- ISF Signs - Signage and Wayfinding
- Wundercovers - Paver Trays

Plant List

Smooth Hydrangea
Common Witch Hazel
Winterberry Holly
Northern Spicebush
Northern Bayberry
Fragrant Low Growing Sumac
Cutleaf Staghorn Sumac
Sassafras
White Meadowsweet
American Black Elderberry
Mapleleaf Viburnum
Japanese Anemone
Wild White Indigo
Sideoats Grama
Blonde Ambition Blue Gramma Grass
Yellow Fox Sedge
Bur Sedge
Pennsylvania Sedge
Dixiewood + Hay Scented Fern
Virginia Wild Rye
Daylily 'Citrina' + 'Hyperion' + 'The Jury's Out'
Bottlebrush Grass
Hellebore 'Snow White'
Poverty Rush
Ostrich Fern
Green Bulrush
Tall Verbena
Chinese Trumpet Creeper
Boston Ivy
Jack In The Pulpit
Clayton's Sweetroot
May Apples
Wood Lily
Virginia Iris
Common Yarrow
Cornflower
Switch Grass
Sweet Black-Eyed Susan
Great Burnet
Little Bluestem