Franklin Park Action Plan

Boston, MA

Client: City of Boston

Collaborators: Agency Landscape and Planning and MASS Design Group

RH Team: Gary Hilderbrand, John Kett, Eric Kramer, Kristin Frederickson, Lydia Gikas Cook, Danica Liongson

My Role: Project Designer 2019 - 2021

Reed Hilderbrand led a master plan process to renew and guide future investment in Franklin Park, a 500 -acre park within Boston’s Emerald Necklace Park System. The core design team comprised two other design and planning firms and a supplementary team of 17 specialist sub-consultants across a range of disciplines from environmental scientists to economists and community engagement specialists.

My responsibilities as Project Designer included graphic production, project research, site analysis, concept development, assistance with design and sub-consultant team coordination, and participation in client meetings and community and stakeholder engagement events.

The neighborhoods surrounding the park are diverse and predominantly underrepresented or economically underserved. Extensive outreach and engagement demonstrated the critical value of building trust and understanding with the community organizations and indidviduals that have used and stewarded the park for decades.

Community Participation (right)

The project included five phases, with many points along the way where community members could share their feedback, ideas, and expertise. Engagement formats included pop-up events, neighborhood canvassing, and public meetings. When the pandemic began, we had to re-calibrate our approach to engagement. We shifted public meetings into a virtual format and developed a printed field guide for families to explore the Park’s history, ecology, and places.

Spatial Organization (left)

Olmsted’s General Plan for the Park didn’t include contour lines, which concealed the central role that the site’s drumlin topography played in structuring the spaces and circulation of the Park. When we overlaid the original circulation design onto an elevation model, we uncovered a crystal clear design intent. Olmsted organized major programmatic clusters according to three distinct topographic zones. Circulation paths and parkways wove the spaces together by tracing the edges of drumlins and slipping through valleys. These movements along the glacial grain are punctuated by overlooks, where visitors traverse hillsides to arrive at open panoramic views.

Over time, pieces of the park were sold away to different institutions, such as the Zoo, the Golf Course, and the Shattuck Hospital. Fences, walls, and barriers erected at the edges of these new uses interrupted the original spatial organization and severed major connections. As a result, the experience of the Park today is very segmented and disorienting. Reconnecting and re-orienting the park to its topography and context became a driving concept behind the design.

Tanglewood Landscape Framework Plan

Master Plan - Lenox, MA

Client: Boston Symphony Orchestra

Collaborator: Roll Baressi Associates

RH Team: Doug Reed, Adrian Nial, Geoff Fritz

My Role: Project Designer 2016 - 2019

Tanglewood is a 524-acre campus of outdoor concert halls, studios, and historic estate houses, situated on a ridge overlooking the serene Stockbridge Bowl and emerald ridges of surrounding Berkshire hills.

Despite this unique and beautiful context, deferred maintenance and incremental growth have impeded connections to the larger landscape and fragmented the campus landscape experience. The Plan sets forth principles and actionable recommendations to restore the connectivity, continuity, and beauty of the campus landscape as a singular destination for visitors to experience music in nature.

As Project Designer, I collaborated with the team to advance the design of campus-wide systems of circulation, vegetation, character, and furnishings. I produced presentations and participated in six workshops with the BSO to communicate the design and solicit feedback. I then worked with the team to synthesize this two-year long process into a 125-page booklet of graphics and narrative detailing our recommendations.