This project based along the Black Rock Canal in Buffalo, NY had many constraints and stipulations that made designing a successful space fun and challenging. For one, we were tasked with designing a new park in a city I had never been to that responded to the texture of the neighborhood and the city as a whole. I also had to span a massive gap between the park space and a proposed trail way along the canal, blocked by an active train line and a highway. These two site features had very specific height limits which prompted a height increase of 23 feet over the site’s length. Much of Buffalo’s park system and streetscape design can be attributed to Olmsted, who is known for saying that Buffalo is “the best planned city … in the United States, if not the world.”
My final design consists of a multi-tier park containing the essence of a naturalized amphitheater. Each tier has incorporated seating, and the southern side of the park features a fully accessible ramp that connects with each tier. The tiers not only provide unique spaces and a sense of containment to the space, but also a creative way to reach the height constraint of 23 feet to go over the train line. An axis was created following the angle of Lafayette Avenue, the street adjacent to the park. This axis is used as an accent and contains a water feature that runs through most of the site. The site ultimately leads up to a bridge which gaps the train line and the highway, which then connects to an elevator and a sent of stairs, taking the user down to the trail way along the canal. Ultimately the space that is created by this design can be used for a number of activities, ranging from picnics to sports to small concerts. I stared with preliminary sketches, but eventually modeled the whole site and design in SketchUp. This model was used for every aspect of the final product, base maps, sections, and then used in Lumion to render perspective images as well.