Main Street Median Design Competition
Summer 2007

The site for this design competition is the Main Street median in Burlington, Vermont, The purpose of the design project is to explore new, creative possibilities for gateway design and generate excitement in the community for a gateway design.

The following concepts and sketches are from the Landworks Team: David Raphael, Jory Raphael, Kate Pond, Mark Smith, Diane Gayer

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Design Concept: A Celebration of Place

• Creates synergy with the architecture, landscape and the context of place by developing solutions that provide seasonal interest, and include sculptural and landscape elements that interplay with snow, rainwater, and vegetation;

• Evokes the dynamics of light and shadow and day and night so that the components of the design are always accessible in one form or another;

• Incorporates (with University involvement and oversight) the concepts and spirit of the master plan for the University’s Gateway District;

• Illustrates and activates ecological and green design to reinforce sustainability principles and the goals of the city’s planning efforts;

• Considers traffic safety issues and visibility, and incorporates an aspect of the city’s well established wayfinding and identity system;

• Addresses the issues around median maintenance and pedestrian control while “recapturing the green” of the center strip;

• Creates a meaningful and engaging gateway concept that all city visitors and residents, of all ages, will appreciate;

• Taps into the symbols, icons and life of the city - its natural history and sense of place - and in so doing becomes part of the city’s life;

• Employs a range of durable and appropriate materials such as steel for 3-D components, masonry and local stone for hardscape and native plants for the greenscape; and

• Develops elements that can be transferred to other sites, including the palette of landscape and hardscape materials as well as the iconography.

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Six Design Elements

• Checkerboard ground: (concrete and granite) footprint scale; water patterns; infiltration; urban grid; threaded with grasses and mosses; animals tracks; bronze fossil insets

• Hairpin haiku: (corten steel and black powder-coated panels) car-scale; “words to drive by” lake / mountain / green / city

• Totems: (granite base with steel rod and icon) city-scale; 20’ place-keepers; alignment with sun declination; icons (water, fish, sun, mountains, birds) recall our place within the watershed between the mountains and the lake

• Stillwater garden: (stone wall, vegetative ground, water); reflection pool as collector and transformer of our urban ways; stormwater system runs into the pond; vegetative edge; stone wall edge; seating; ducks

• Touchstone elements: (granite, steel); pedestrian scale; granite bollards with touchstone elements as “newell posts”

• Median greens: (plantings); pedestrian scale; wave of grasses

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