Allegheny Riverfront Park (1993-2001) includes a lower site, thirty-five feet wide and almost one mile long, and an the upper level along Fort Dusquesne Boulevard. The design team included Michael Van Valkenburgh, Matthew Urbanski and Laura Solano from Michael Van Valkenburg Associates, Inc., and artists Ann Hamilton and Michael Mercil. Because all agreed that the park should embrace both its natural and urban conditions, the lower park was placed not just beside the river, but also in and over the water’s edge. Even the flow of cars and trucks along the Tenth Street Bypass remains integral to the site. And just as the park design directly addresses its urban/natural context, so Hamilton and Mercil's artwork contributes a palpably human scale and dimension to the whole. In space and through time, art and park reinforce one another as a singular system of natural/cultural encounters. The nature of the working process makes it difficult to point anywhere in particular and claim, "Here is the landscape and there is the art."
Photo credit: Annie O'Neill, Offices of Michael Van Valkenburgh, Associates, Inc.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Special thanks to The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust
Related
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Vol. 15, No. 1, pp. 10-13.
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· Simon, Joan. Ann Hamilton. 2002. New York. Harry N. Abrams. pp. 182, 211, 213.
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