{"id":217145,"date":"2023-10-30T08:52:00","date_gmt":"2023-10-30T12:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/interiordesign.net\/?post_type=id_news&p=217145"},"modified":"2023-10-31T11:43:16","modified_gmt":"2023-10-31T15:43:16","slug":"tom-lee-park-design-memphis","status":"publish","type":"id_news","link":"https:\/\/interiordesign.net\/designwire\/tom-lee-park-design-memphis\/","title":{"rendered":"How Designers Transformed a Memphis Park into a Public Oasis"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Landscape architecture for the 31-acre park, the first to provide ADA-compliant river access, is by Scape, which is teaming again with Gang for Stanford University\u2019s Doer School of Sustainability commons. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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October 30, 2023<\/p>\n\n\n

Words: <\/span>Annie Block<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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How Designers Transformed a Memphis Park into a Public Oasis<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA can\u2019t miss design team.\u201d That\u2019s how Carol Coletta, Memphis River Parks Partnership president and CEO, describes the ensemble responsible for reinvigorating the city\u2019s 31-acre Tom Lee Park, named after the Black levee worker who, in 1925, while steering his skiff up the Mississippi, rescued 32 people from a capsized riverboat, himself not knowing how to swim, but wasn\u2019t dedicated to Lee until 1954, two years after his death. Over the decades, the flat \u00be-mile stretch had become arid and lifeless. That is until women-led firms Studio Gang<\/a> and Scape<\/a>, and Black artists Theaster Gates<\/a> and James Little came upon the scene. Among Jeanne Gang and team\u2019s contribution as master planner and architect is the Sunset Canopy, an expansive community-activity pavilion of locally sourced glulam supported by steel \u201cquad pods,\u201d which nod to the riverfront\u2019s industrial past, all anchored by a vibrant floorwork by Little. Other forms of life\u201430,000 yards of sod, thousands of native trees and plants, myriad pollinators, undulating hills\u2014are the work of Scape\u2019s Kate Orff and her crew of landscape architects. A few verdant steps away from all the buzz is Gates\u2019s meditative installation of 33 monumental stone stools\u2014one for Lee and everyone he saved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n