Evolving Path: The Next Step for National Parks | with Colin Fishbaugh
The underlying premise behind National Parks is that the natural environment should be set aside from the built environment. This separation is meant to create a sense of escape to a place where the very real problems of the present no longer exist. The fundamental flaw with this premise of separation is that it creates a feeling of otherness; that the built environment and the natural environment are two separate systems and not two pieces of the same system. As the National Park Service approaches its centennial it is time to take the next step forward and rethink their mission to address this issue. The Cuyahoga Valley National Park can show what this next step will look like. The interventions proposed all deal with this problem of separation by addressing the park’s main natural feature and largest current issue: its hydrologic system.
Drop Down Access
A sunken park placed at the edge of the town of Brecksville and the national park serves as a grand entranceway without a literal sign. By pushing this park under the road, pedestrian access between town and park is strengthened and the town’s stormwater is given a new path where it can be retained and remediated before entering the existing hydrologic system.
Downtown
The new downtown park, and more specifically the new community center, serves as the starting point to the path that establishes the new relationship between the town and the park. The end point to this path is the riverfront area, which includes a sustainability learning center, a light rail station, kayak rentals, and an 80-foot viewing tower.
Riverfront
Canopy Trail
A pedestrian infrastructure system spanning the entire length of the park further strengthens pedestrian access while defining a clear path to all the park’s features. This new handicapped-accessible trail lifts the park visitor up into the tree canopies to give him or her a closer interaction with an often-overlooked element of the hydrologic cycle: water storage in the leaves of trees.
Designed Hydrological Experiment Two residential neighborhoods placed along the ridges of two distinct gorges bring the built environment into the natural environment. These neighborhoods each remediate the strormwater flowing into their specific gorge in a different way and allow the public to view this designed experiment. The underlying purpose of these developments is to educate and inspire the public by showing them that man can live within the natural environment and benefit the system as a whole; man does not need to be separate from the natural environment in order to preserve it.
Gorge Neighborhood 1
This first stormwater technique uses the built environment to its fullest potential by allowing stormwater to not only flow down terraced retention ponds alongside homes, but also over the homes themselves. By placing roofs at grade, stormwater flows onto the roof and into a raingarden. From here the water is stepped down the buildings’ facades in horizontal stormwater planters.
Gorge Neighborhood 2
This second stormwater technique attempts a more minimalist approach by using existing topography to direct stormwater flow around homes and into a two-step retention pond system.
Gorge Neighborhood 1
Gorge Neighborhood 2