The Creative Corridor transforms the main street of the endangered historic city center of four blocks in Little Rock, Arkansas, through the gathering of culture and art rather than its traditional retail store.
Introduction
The goal of the Creative District is to build your own identity based on a mix of art-oriented work and living environments. The design approach is to reshape the corridor into a node and take advantage of the urbanized streetscape—landscape architecture, ecological engineering, public space configuration, street-facing systems, and other urban landscape elements.
The Creative Corridor: A Main Street Revitalization for Little Rock
Reason to Be Selected
“Main street design is a grand challenge of the 21st century as urban neighborhoods seek to create sustainable, resilient, and beautiful public spaces. This project highlights what careful design can contribute to the making of place, not a lot of jewels or distractions, but simple, clear, and elegant design of public space. The emphasis on thresholds, nodes, and shared spaces is exactly what urban design needs to engage” – 2014 Awards Jury
Highlights:
Complete street;
Low-energy,
Low-emission developmental streetscape;
Public participation.
Details
The project uses traffic priority to intensive traffic functions in order to support the new cultural and artistic focus in a mixed living environment. The complete street is designed for users of all ages and abilities, including pedestrians, bicycles, motorbikes and public transport users, and is an integral part of the successful creation of a comprehensive environment. The design phase introduces the public spaces that are rare in the city – integrated developmental low-energy, low-emission grey water treatment systems, shared street configurations, bicycle lanes, and a joint transport rail bus plaza with ancillary equipment. The shared street configuration, together with the new urban landscape system, connects the public space to the private space, forming a new level of walking function that supports the development of an innovative economy.
Recommended
The design of the streetscape adds ecological functions in addition to social and urban functions. The design applies the LID processing system to the design of the main street. The tree-lined avenue combines with the shared street landscape to identify 17 recognized ecosystem services – including atmospheric regulation, flood intervention regulation, water control, sediment control, nutrient cycling, waste treatment, plant pollination, habitat and many more. The boulevard is like a large tree box filter with an infiltration system to irrigate the low-water demand landscape of the original sound, which can also be used as a place for outdoor dining and gatherings. The street itself has become an ecological resource, and the source of pollution has been metabolized on the spot before it is discharged into the sewers near the Arkansas River.
The development of large companies in the nearby central business district is an element of foreign invasion. The project goes beyond simply observing historical protection norms and street beautification, but proposes a retrofit solution that responds to the reusable economy of adaptability with the building owners of large companies. The deep-rooted property rights culture in the region makes it impossible for norms to protect cultural heritage. Instead, through the development of elements such as roads, arcade malls, city porches, and amphitheatre that recreate the sense of the main street, a flexible urban landscape platform can communicate with conflicting architectural traditions – new and old. Real and virtual, big and small.
Conclusions
This project highlights what kind of venues can be carefully designed to create. The project promotes a simple and elegant public space design. The valve ports, nodes and shared spaces highlighted in the project are exactly what the urban design needs to participate in.
FULL STORY:
2014 ASLA Awards
Published on Febrary 6, 2015 in Gooood
TOPICS | Little Rock | Intelligent | Landscape
Reference: http://uacdc.uark.edu/
Lat: | 34.7456 |
Lng: | -91.7289 |
Type: | |
Region: | NorthAmerica |
Scale: | District |
Field: | Landscape |
City: | Little Rock |