R o s s's L a n d i n g

Ross's Landing Park and Plaza is a four acre public open space embracing the new Tennessee Aquarium in downtown Chattanooga, Tennessee. Though it is geared towards pedestrians, it is hardly pedestrian. Its forms, materials and character are at once new and familiar - a trait of fine art.

The concept grew out of a series of design workshops in Chattanooga, where the majority of the participants urged the design team to weave the natural beauty of the surrounding mountains and landscape into an urban plaza. This very paradox - city and nature - became the design concept for the entire project. The plan is a series of rhythmic landscape bands that alternate between hardscape (city) and landscape (nature) as one moves through the space. Further, the bands commence on the city side as small, finely-scaled, geometric expressions gradually progressing to large, coarsely-scaled, organic expressions near the river as the final, broadest band of a landscape tapestry. Thus, the landscape design is not read at once, but is only understood and appreciated by moving through it.

Within the bands, the team explored a number of themes relative to the natural and cultural history of Chattanooga. It was important to the citizens that those unique qualities of their city be present in their most significant public open space, and thus the team performed a great deal of research on the city to discover those attributes. What emerged from those interviews and sources were a series of fascinating tales to be interpreted and expressed as landscape art.

The natural history of the area is expressed in a progression of landscape types from arboreal forest of the upper Smoky Mountains to the riparian landscape of the Tennessee River. As one enters the park, the initial view is of a fountain and a ceremonial arch. Both of these take on the form of the mountains beyond - a soft organic curve. The ceremonial arch is one of the boldest features of the park - it is, in fact, a "lifted" landscape band underneath which thousands of visitors walk to enter the park.

John Ross was the first European settler to arrive in Chattanooga. He became an honorary member of the Cherokee Indian Tribe and fought unsuccessfully for their freedom in the 1830's. The result of this unsuccessful battle was a dark episode in American history - The Trail of Tears. This was the forced march of thousands of Cherokees from Ross's Landing to Oklahoma. Thousands died along the way and to commemorate this story, a series of pavement tiles, in the shape of Tennessee, is engraved with the chronology of events. These tiles are arranged in sequence in a pavement band and each one is deliberately broken down the middle to acknowledge the failure of the justice system. In addition, four thousand crocuses are planted in that same landscape band as a living perennial memory to those who perished.

Other elements of art and community include an homage to the Coca Cola company, whose original bottling plant was located here, in the form of a green glass aggregate concrete band and a bottle-bottom bridge over the stream, a pavement piece in the form of railroad tracks featuring granite pavers inscribed with the words "Chattanooga Choo Choo"' and a Civil War "terrarium" complete with cannon balls, musket pieces, belt buckles, etc. from Civil war memorabilia.

The park has opened to tremendous critical acclaim, but what is most important is that the citizens of Chattanooga have embraced this new place by the river as their own front porch, because they can see themselves and their heritage in the park.