• By Sarah Ridgely
• December 10, 2018

APA's Newsletter Article: Adapting Designed Landscapes

This article was published in the Fall Newsletter of the American Planning Association’s Urban Design and Preservation Division. The findings were incorporated into NCPC's recently adopted Parks and Open Space element.

Introduction

Many cities face the challenge of improving designed landscapes that are historically or culturally significant but no longer serve contemporary user needs. These landscapes – intentionally created by a landscape architect, master gardener, architect, horticulturist, or other professional according to design principles – may be associated with a significant person or people, trend, or event related to a city’s design evolution. Some may even illustrate an important development in the theory and practice of landscape architecture at a national level. Design professionals often debate how to adapt these designs from another era while honoring the original design intent.

Washington, DC’s public realm, guided by the L’Enfant and McMillan Plans, has served residents and visitors well for generations. The National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC), the federal government’s central planning agency for the National Capital Region, ensures that the capital city’s public realm is protected and its iconic setting grows and evolves as a local, national, and international destination. Over time, some designed landscapes within this public realm have been preserved and rehabilitated, while others were adapted to accommodate a range of uses and users. When discussion arises over whether or not a landscape should be preserved or adapted, NCPC staff is often tasked with facilitating dialogue between the public, federal and local agencies, and other organizations with disparate positions. To get past the stalemates and move forward with solutions, staff began to frame a more deliberative and inclusive approach to assess changes to these spaces.

In 2017, as a result of several projects submitted to it for review, NCPC began assessing the impact of adapting Modernist landscapes in order to provide a more consistent examination. Staff soon realized that the issue was much broader, covered all design eras throughout the capital city, and influenced many facets of the agency’s work, including policy development and physical planning.

This article explores how designed landscapes evolve and respond to changes in a city’s context, public use, and aesthetic values. It addresses how planners and designers can more consistently assess the balance between historic preservation and contemporary public space expectations, and highlights important factors for consideration during the assessment process.

Washington's Design Evolution

As a design style becomes less influential, it is important for historic preservationists and urban planners to examine how best to retain the most significant examples of this architectural or landscape design. While Washington, DC is largely known for its neoclassical architecture and landscapes that reflect the visions of the L’Enfant and McMillan Plans, other eras and styles also contribute to the city’s nationally recognized design character. These include the Italianate landscape of Meridian Hill Park (also known as Malcolm X Park), landscapes in the Victorian Garden tradition like President’s Park, and parks and plazas designed in the Modernist and Post-modern period, such as the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial and the Hirshhorn Museum Sculpture Garden. Landscapes of this era often resulted from urban renewal and major redevelopment initiatives.

Design styles are not the only things that evolved in Washington—the ways the public uses spaces to recreate, commemorate, and gather are also different. As a result, user needs, programmatic changes, and changes to the surrounding area must all be considered when exploring adaptation options. However, as noted, there is debate about whether adapting a design from another era to suit current needs is disrespectful to the original design intent. Add in the need to preserve historically significant places, and the decision-making process can be challenging.

A Need to Adapt

When revisiting designed landscapes from previous eras, it is important to understand that they represent a particular time and approach that contributed to their form and features. These spaces cannot be separated from the economic, political, and social environments in which they were generated. In the case of Washington, DC, many landscapes were designed to complement monumental architecture, and some (especially Modernist-era landscapes) created unique forms of public spaces that mixed plazas, parks, and playgrounds in new combinations that some consider works of art. Understanding the design history, social aspirations, and spatial connections of designed landscapes from all eras is critical to planning for their future and responding to today’s urban conditions. Without an understanding of the original design context, these places lose their connection to Washington’s design legacy. It is equally important to generate public enthusiasm and support, and ensure inclusive participation in the design process to determine a landscape’s future.

Designed landscapes face various pressures, ranging from alterations in surrounding areas to changes in their use and management. Redevelopment on adjacent parcels, for example, can influence a landscape’s use, access, and circulation patterns. Other changes can include the introduction of barriers, such as highways and bridges, new traffic patterns that make pedestrian access difficult, or security features that alter pedestrian routes.

Physical changes are not the only catalysts driving the need for designed landscapes to adapt. As urban environments develop and become denser, demographics shift and the way people use public spaces evolves. As a result, designed landscapes and the needs they serve must evolve as well. Many of these urban spaces need to accommodate changes in use, new programmatic goals, infrastructure improvements, modified funding, and ongoing maintenance issues.

Even with historic designations, designed landscapes need to provide functional urban spaces. While a strict preservationist approach may make sense in some cases, other spaces may need to adapt to face contemporary urban challenges and attract more people. This is similar to the rehabilitation of historic buildings to accommodate new uses. Landscapes, just like buildings, need to respond to contemporary challenges and design techniques. While alterations may not always be needed, they can be done in a manner that respects important character-defining features so that the original design intent remains intact.
Regardless of the catalysing force driving the need to adapt a designed landscape, it is important to consider and evaluate key issues before determining if restoration, rehabilitation, or redesign is the appropriate approach. Addressing these issues in advance helps to clarify the history and evolution of a landscape, its current use pattern, and its local and regional context.

Developing a Consistent Assessment Approach

After researching recent projects involving designed landscapes reviewed by the Commission, NCPC staff found challenges associated with applying competing planning principles and balancing design features from different design eras. Based on this research, the NCPC team developed an assessment approach to ensure that staff consistently analyze a variety of landscape design, historic preservation, and planning issues when considering potential changes to designed landscapes.

While some of the issues are similar to assessing buildings under consideration for renovation or redevelopment, landscapes use a different design vocabulary that does not always translate to the historic preservation practices for buildings. People interact differently with landscapes than with buildings, and their expectations of public space are much different, too. Public space belongs to everyone, not just a property owner or business. Because there are often many voices at the table with a variety of expectations, determining whether to preserve or adapt a space can become a very time-intensive and passionate debate. A consistent and deliberate assessment of potential changes helps provide a more objective approach for these discussions.

NCPC’s assessment approach (see box below for details) guides staff through a series of questions to determine whether an existing site should be restored, rehabilitated, or redesigned. The questions cover how people engage with the existing and proposed spaces, the designer’s original intent, and the design significance of the public space in relationship to the neighborhood, city, and region. It also helps the planner identify character-defining features throughout the site. Finally, the approach calls for the use of the results to assess if adaptation is appropriate. In some cases, the significance of the design, and its role as an exceptional example of its era, merits it preservation. In others, alterations may be introduced that minimize changes to the character-defining features of the site to improve its functionality and use.

Key Considerations when Evaluating Designed Landscapes

Use of Space

Understand how the current use and users evolved over time. Compare how the needs of existing users, along with a proposed/modified user group, help define scope, program, and proposed improvements.

Design Characteristics

Identify the existing design characteristics, including site elements, style, and amenities that help define the character and role of the unique landscape. Compare the existing conditions against the proposed improvements to understand the programmatic changes and potential impacts.

Original Design Intent

Consider information regarding the original design, including the site's spatial orientation, style, and site elements to evaluate proposals.

Design Context

Evaluate how the landscape's surrounding context, including adjacent land-use, demographics, physical and visual characteristics, influence the perception, and use of a specific site. Use this context to inform how the landscape responds to and fits within its surroundings.

Performance and Maintenance

Understand the existing landscape's overall performance and function to help determine inherent design issues and maintenance limitations. Use this information to improve existing or inform the new design of site systems, such as stormwater management, water features, and a site's resilience with respect to climate conditions.

Historical and Cultural Significance

Consider the landscape's historical and cultural significance when evaluating proposed improvements and modifications. This includes a site's character-defining elements, views or view sheds, cultural traditions, and whether the site is associated with a notable designer.

While the assessment questions were originally designed for NCPC’s project review process, they are quickly making their way into the agency’s physical-planning and policy-development work. Though the questions were originally for internal use, staff now uses them to help guide stakeholder meetings and other discussions as part of the collaborative planning and design process typical of public-realm projects.

Putting the Approach to Use

For physical-planning projects, the approach helps staff frame the questions to engage with stakeholders and the public before beginning any planning and design work. One place where the approach is put to use is the Pennsylvania Avenue Initiative, an effort where federal and local stakeholders are considering potential physical and programmatic changes to the avenue’s public realm (including roads, sidewalks, plazas, and parks) along the 1.2-mile segment between the White House and the U.S. Capitol. This stretch serves as the physical and symbolic connection between the nation’s executive and legislative branches of government.

Located between the National Mall and downtown Washington, it is part of the larger Pennsylvania Avenue National Historic Site established in 1965, and has a rich, multi-layered planning and cultural history. The road, sidewalks, parks, and plazas evolved since its inception in 1791, and were cohesively redesigned in the 1970s and 80s as part of the Pennsylvania Avenue Development Corporation’s redevelopment of the area. While it provides an exceptional setting for the capital city’s most important civic events, it lacks the amenities normally associated with a high-profile and bustling city avenue. The assessment approach will help the team balance user needs, contemporary planning and design practices, and historic preservation issues as potential solutions to activate the public realm are explored.

NCPC also incorporated this assessment approach into proposed updates to the agency’s policies regarding federal parks and open space. NCPC is responsible for developing the Federal Elements of Washington’s Comprehensive Plan. These elements provide long-term guidance for development decisions on federal property throughout the National Capital Region. The Federal Parks & Open Space Element recognizes the challenges associated with adapting designed landscapes and provides guidance on how to conduct an effective and appropriate assessment of proposed changes. The element’s policies acknowledge that designed landscapes in urban areas must successfully serve the public. As such, they must accommodate a variety of users, incorporate seating and shaded areas, promote opportunities for social interaction, and maintain physical and visual connectivity to surrounding areas. Policies also acknowledge the importance of preserving significant character, defining features, and accommodating change in a manner sensitive to the original design.

Adaptation in Action

In order to develop a consistent assessment approach, NCPC researched earlier projects reviewed by the Commission to identify key components and challenges associated with adapting landscapes. One project we reviewed was on the National Mall, one of the most iconic designed landscapes in the city and nation, and a preeminent public space that hosts events of national significance. Over time, the uses on the National Mall contributed to its deterioration, which resulted in worn turf, heavily compacted soil, and poor drainage. This central gathering space must accommodate large numbers of people flexibly, efficiently, and sustainably.

The proposed improvements included a redesign of the walkways, paved areas, and underground infrastructure to accommodate public events and minimize impacts to the turf. These adaptations, implemented in 2016, allow the National Mall to accommodate a variety of events while also protecting historic, cultural, and natural resources. This design solution also improves circulation, visitor amenities, and recreational opportunities. These improvements respond to the types and intensity of use and highlight how landscapes must adapt while still respecting the historic framework of the site.

Another recent example of an adapted landscape reviewed by NCPC is Banneker Park, an 8-acre National Park Service site designed by Dan Kiley, and originally constructed between 1967 and 1969. Located at the terminus of 10th Street, SW, a street redesigned during the height of urban renewal in Washington, the park was determined eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places and the District of Columbia Inventory of Historic Sites in 2012. Eligibility was based on Kiley’s work as a master landscape architect (Criterion C for the National Register of Historic Places).

The site serves as a terminus for 10th Street, SW—and despite its location between L’Enfant Plaza and the National Mall to the north–and the waterfront and the then-planned waterfront development known as the District Wharf to the south–offered limited pedestrian and bicycle access between these areas. With Phase I of The Wharf under construction there was a strong interest to provide a safe, accessible connection through Banneker Park.

To balance the historic-preservation and user-need issues on the site, Wharf developer Hoffman-Madison Waterfront, in coordination with the National Park Service, NCPC, and District Department of Transportation, constructed a temporary staircase and ramp connection at Banneker Park. This solution keeps the fountain and plaza area designed by Kiley intact, and provides a connection to the waterfront that was shown in earlier iterations of Kiley’s design but never realized.

The project includes a stairway constructed on the west side of Banneker Park, which terminates at Maine Avenue, SW near the waterfront Fish Market. In addition, ramps traverse the park’s east side to provide access for pedestrians, including people with disabilities, down to the waterfront and The Wharf. Landscape enhancements reintroduced a portion of the grid pattern of trees original to the Kiley design, and installed wayfinding signage to direct pedestrians and bicycles to and from the overlook. Designed by ZGF, the project is an interim improvement as the area awaits future redevelopment associated with new memorial and museum sites as envisioned by NCPC’s SW Ecodistrict Plan.

Conclusion

Designed landscapes contribute to a city’s character and identity, creating unique visitor experiences and enhancing the public realm network. While some landscapes reflect the best examples of a particular design era and should be preserved or restored, others provide the opportunity to adapt to accommodate an evolving neighborhood, demographics, user needs, and other changes. A consistent and deliberate approach to adaptation benefits the design teams, planners, public, and decision-makers engaged in the stewardship of the public realm.