On the Boards: Design Process
Feb 13, 2009 2:53 am
So how does the West 8 team go about designing a park? Just what is this mysterious ‘park master plan’?
Making a park master plan involves a lot of ‘problem solving’ – What can we design that will make people come back again and again? Where will the pathways go? What will the maintenance requirements be? These are really important matters to be sure, and many of the details will get worked through as we continue to get feedback from you and all the other people involved. But the park master plan also involves processes that aren’t as quantifiable. We get our hands dirty (sometimes literally) drawing, doing studies in 3‑D on the computer, and visiting the island (we can’t get enough of that, particularly in these glorious winter months!). Our goal? To have a park master plan that is inspired by the Island, you (the future park users) and our team’s imagination.
The park master plan is the first step of a design process that has several phases. Through drawings, plans and diagrams, the master plan lays out the kind of a park this will be and how it will look and feel. Once we settle on the “what” of the park in the master plan phase, we’ll then start the detailed work needed to create more specific designs that can be turned into the construction documents needed to actually build the park. [caption id=“attachment_945” align=“aligncenter” width=“299” caption=“The design process also invovles going out to the tip of Governors Island on a freezing cold day in early February, according to Rachel Laszlo Tait, a designer with West 8.”]
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