On the fifth day of construction the gutter was left open to accommodate storm water and a silt sack was installed in the one catch basin that serviced the space. A temporary irrigation system complete with battery-powered timers and grass sprays was installed to keep the sod green for throughout the ArtPrize event in Grand Rapids, Mich.

Art Prize attendees rest on furniture in park patio areas. Seat walls provided flexible seating and along with boulders helped to contain the raised planting areas. Ornamental grasses provided drought resistant masses while shrub roses and mums added color.
Courtesy of Landscape Design Services

ArtPrize is one of the world's largest art competitions and is hosted in Grand Rapids, Mich. Each September. The competition is an open call to artists with display venues throughout downtown as well as at Frederik Meijer Gardens. The competition has both a public vote and juried competitions with a top award of $200,000 and total awards of $560,000.

Since ArtPrize is a non-profit event the showcase project was a donation by our firm with assistance by our partners. We were approached by the director of ArtPrize five weeks prior to the event and asked if we could assist with a pop-up park to enhance the experience of the public attendees. ArtPrize headquarters, the Hub, was to be a more central component of this year's event.

Challenges and requirements included: overcoming the 10" curbed median and providing barrier-free access to the bus stop; space for tables and chairs provided by another event sponsor; space to showcase vehicles provided by another event sponsor; providing space for up to 50 people boarding and exiting the shuttle buses, and an unknown quantity of attendees for registration day and during the event; developing a sense of enclosure and fundamentally transforming the space from a road to a park; providing safety in an road area that was closed, but still half of an open street.

Our design solution was to create a park with a radial design to play off the name of the Hub. The ground plane was left rather open to accommodate as many visitors as possible since no hard estimates were provided by ArtPrize. Textured and colored concrete provided barrier-free access reaching from the existing curb cut to the raised median. It also allowed for a wide area for riders stepping in and out of the shuttle buses.

Additional hard surfaces were composed of compacted stone dust (granite chips and fines) with sodded lawn to soften the space but still provide open areas. Raised planting beds allowed for plants to be placed on top of the road grade. At each end of the park large viburnums and plantings screened views out to create visual separation from the street.