What can an urban park do?
It can create the city’s most valuable real estate by mere proximity. It can resurrect an entire neighborhood from near irrelevance.
That’s what New York City’s High Line accomplished, bringing the masses to the city’s far West Side by reimagining a decommissioned rail platform. And while that swath of much-needed greenery has held the title for best new city park since its debut in 2009, it may very well have seen its supremacy challenged had this design for the FAB (First and Broadway) Civic Center Park in L.A. won out.
This plan, submitted by local architectural firm Brooks + Scarpa and released today, envisioned a two-acre park in Downtown L.A. across from City Hall with ribbons of green cutting through the space. Check out those undulating grassy slopes. Yes, the ones that look like roller-coaster hills.
Unfortunately, the Brooks + Scarpa plan lost out on the official commission to an OMA/MLA/IDEO project, which we’re sure will be cool enough. (Here’s a look at what those three firms, working in tangent, have planned for the site.)
While their version of the space does have a restaurant, arts spaces, meeting places and more, it doesn’t have roller-coaster hills, and for that, we can’t help but think that we’re missing out.
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