Parks and technology are concepts we generally don’t associate with one another. Parks are the realm of nature, and there technology does not belong. The urban park, for that matter, developed from its 19th-century roots as a rejoinder to the ills imposed by technology, a place of respite away from the harsh forces of the mechanized modern city.
In our digital age, however, when our pockets spill over with computing power that would have been unthinkable even a few decades ago, that dichotomy is obsolete. There is no wishing away the technology that is reshaping how we inhabit the city’s built and natural environments, a process only accelerated by the pandemic.
The so-called smart city, in which technology is an omnipresent component of urban design — allowing the tracking of every conceivable metric in the name of efficiency — is a scary prospect, and one that warrants vigilance. But a new downtown “smart park,” West End Square, presents a model for how the delicate relationship between the urban landscape and our connected way of living might be navigated.
The three-quarter-acre, $7.55 million park is sited, appropriately, in the heart of the West End Historic District, the city’s burgeoning silicon business hub. It replaces a former surface parking lot bound on its north side by the Spaghetti Warehouse (built in 1893 and currently being rehabilitated), and by North Market, North Record, and Corbin streets on its east, west, and southern sides, respectively.
West End Square is the second of four parks to be developed by the nonprofit Parks for Downtown Dallas, founded by Robert W. Decherd, chairman, president and chief executive of A. H. Belo Corporation, the parent company of The Dallas Morning News. The first, Pacific Plaza Park, opened in 2019.
The design is by Field Operations, the New York-based studio founded by James Corner, and best known as the landscape architects of the High Line. The firm’s other projects include the remaking of Chicago’s Navy Pier and Freshkills Park, a reclamation of a 2,200-acre landfill on New York’s Staten Island. As those projects suggest, an integration of natural ecologies within urban context has been a central theme of the studio’s work.
So what, exactly, does it mean to be a “smart park”? For one thing, it is Wi-Fi enabled, allowing visitors to hook into the Internet for either work or play. A 50-foot-long communal work table, set under a pergola that provides shade, is equipped with wireless charging stations and traditional outlets, for the powering of our omnipresent devices. There is both free and fixed seating — in the form of long wooden benches — and the table height is set to accommodate wheelchairs.
An “innovation arcade” runs along the Market Street side of the park; here, the louver-topped pergola is equipped with “plug and play” rigging to accommodate art installations and other presentation equipment. (The inaugural project, Antibodies, by the Montreal-based artist Daniel Iregui and sponsored by the Dallas arts group Aurora, is on view through April 4.)
Much of the park’s infrastructure will be regulated by sensors. At night, when the park is closed, lighting will drop to 10% of standard — saving electricity and respecting the neighbors — but if motion is detected, lights flick back on to illuminate the area where that motion is detected, a convenience and a safety measure. Plantings, as well, are generally low, so there is visibility across the square at all times, a feature sure to relieve anxious parents.
Sensors also monitor the plantings, controlling irrigation levels, keeping track of soil hydration, and remotely notifying the city if there are problems in the system.
The park does its best to accommodate the inevitable problem with technology: obsolescence. “We don’t know what’s going to be the next thing,” Decherd says. Flexibility is built into the infrastructure, with extra raceways for wiring — if there is even wiring in the future.
“We think about smart in a larger context,” says Isabel Castilla, the principal who led the project for Field Operations. “A smart park is responsive to its immediate context in terms of weather, in terms of how you can create a space that is comfortable for its users across all seasons, and that is sustainable in its plantings and material choices.”
A void, filled
The smartest thing about this park has nothing to do with technology. It’s the location. The West End, until now, has been a place without a place. The historic district has museums, restaurants, businesses and residences — but no real space where the public might gather and appreciate the environs in peace. The only green space in the area is Dealey Plaza, which is on the periphery, straddles a high-speed corridor, and is more of a tourist site than a genuine park.
West End Square fills this void, nestled comfortably in the neighborhood of red brick warehouses and light manufacturing architecture from the late 19th and early 20th century. “It opens up to the city and you have this view of the skyline that’s almost like you took a picture of it,” Decherd says. Indeed, it does offer postcard views, with the pyramid top of Fountain Place and the staggered rectangles of the Bank of America tower popping above the adjacent, low-slung historic buildings.
Within, the park is roughly divided into two zones: an interactive area that tracks the perimeter of the square, and a more passive internal garden, intended for strolling and contemplation.
The interactive spaces sit under the shade of the pergola, and are defined by a path of brick pavers laid out in a herringbone pattern. “We wanted the edge of the park to feel integrated with its context,” Castilla says.
Among the interactive features are pingpong and foosball tables, and a series of seven porch-style swings (four singles and three long enough for several individuals) that run along the western edge of the square. These are adult swings, though children will no doubt enjoy them, too. Their range of motion is restricted in height, but then the object isn’t to kick the sky, but achieve a bit of relaxing motion.
On the opposite side of the square, facing the “innovation arcade” is a semicircular stepped seating bench that can serve as a mini amphitheater.
All of the park’s fixed furniture — the swings, work table, and benches — are made of heavy slats of reddish Brazilian ironwood. Benches are surprisingly comfortable, with thick backs and gently angled tops so you can prop up your elbows and stretch out your arms comfortably, like a pasha.
The reddish wood is both attractive and resilient, a dense species that will last, and coated to prevent damage from rodents, insects, people and water. If problems do arise, the modular slat design makes maintenance an almost literal snap. “They’re like really fancy Ikea,” says Jim Shipley, project manager for the Beck Group, which carried out the design. “You can just take one out and replace it.”
Lessons from the pandemic
The more contemplative, interior space of the park is laced with meandering walkways and a small lawn, ideal for picnics but too small for athletics. There is only one mature tree, a large crape myrtle at the southwest end of the park, which somehow managed to survive the site’s previous life as a parking lot.
In the park’s center, ringed by a bench, is a bur oak that is small now, but will grow quickly to provide substantial shade. Elsewhere the square is dotted with Mexican sycamore, chinkapin oak and plum trees. Plant species throughout were selected for durability.
There is a fountain, too, a modest table of black granite that looks like a sculpture by Isamu Noguchi. Depending on the conditions, it can produce either a pleasing aural trickle or a cooling shroud of mist.
Although the park was conceived prior to (and built during) the pandemic, it has perfectly captured the zeitgeist of this moment, when we are looking for alternatives that will allow us to function out of our homes and out of our offices.
“Ultimately, when the pandemic was at its height, the few places that people could go out to were parks,” says Castilla. “And what the pandemic has done is raise awareness in investing in parks and public spaces, because as human beings we need the opportunity to be around greenery and other people.”
That is smart thinking, and not just for downtown.
