Ziegler Park

Ziegler Park represents a successful interdisciplinary collaboration among glaserworks, Human Nature, and PWWG to transform a disinvested urban park on the edge of two Downtown neighborhoods into a vibrant public space. The new 4.5-acre park provides a safe and welcoming urban oasis featuring: an aquatics facility with pool and spray ground; subterranean parking garage topped with a neighborhood green and walking loop; and a variety of passive and active recreational spaces.

The park demonstrates a consistent quality of design across disciplines and highlights the importance of integrating architecture, site, and surrounds to define and activate space, honor history and context, and reveal the identity of place.  One of the challenges in terms of design and infrastructure was marrying the active west park with the passive east park, which were separated by a road and contained structures (of vastly different functions and scale) designed by two different architecture firms. Through rigorous process and dialogue, the team unified east and west parks with a central pedestrian corridor and congruent lighting strategy, architectural detailing and materials palette.

In part, the park components reflect the desires and needs expressed throughout the intensive community engagement process. In whole, the interdisciplinary effort helped to successfully transform Ziegler Park into the “backyard” of the neighborhood.