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Olympic Sculpture Park 

image by Seattle Art Museum

Facts

• Name: Olympic Sculpture Park
• Purpose: to develop a vibrant, 8.5-acre downtown green space for people to experience art outdoors and connect with Elliott Bay
• Year Built: 2007
• Address: between Elliott and Western Ave. and Broad and Eagle St.
• Client: Seattle Art Museum and Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation
• Designer: Weiss/Manfredi Architects
• Cost: $30,000,000
• Design Commission Reviews:
• • briefing (October 19, 2000)
  • concept design (June 20, 2002)
  • design development (November 6, 2003)
  • street and right of way vacations (January 15, 2004)
  • street and right of way vacations (April 15, 2004)

Design Commission's Influence
The Design Commission believed the development of the Olympic Sculpture Park afforded the City a great opportunity to add much-needed downtown green space and reclaim part of Seattle's waterfront and return it to a natural setting.

The Design Commission made several recommendations for improvement to the Seattle Parks and Recreation Department, the Seattle Art Museum and their design team:

Pedestrian ascessible water's edge.

image by Seattle Art Museum

Overall Concept and Direction

• bring the park down to the water's edge to provide user's access to Elliott Bay, otherwise the park could be anywhere
• select a designer who can develop a new concept for a sculpture park, and who can recognize the many creative opportunities of the site
• ensure that the park, with its multiple levels and waterfront gardens at the shoreline, be seen as a single, unified space
• think innovatively about art within the landscape and the city, especially at this large scale

Urban context.

image by Seattle Art Museum

Urban Design and Neighborhood Fit

• integrate the park with the urban context and make it easily accessible
• create a visible, welcoming threshold at the intersection of Broad Street and Alaskan Way
• better address the pedestrian experience along Elliott Avenue, which now functions as a highway
• integrate the urban design intentions of the nearby Potlatch Trail and Growing Vine Street projects

The park's Grove. 

image by Seattle Art Museum

Site Planning

• design the canted planes to minimize the need for handrails and to mitigate the noise from Elliott Avenue and surrounding streets
• keep the proposed differentiated places and gardens
• define appropriate scales for the four different garden concepts
• develop secondary paths and social spaces in the park
• create multiple pedestrian connections to the waterfront
• create clear distinctions between the valley, grove, and shore
• make the shore area large enough to work as planned
• keep the proposed placement of the utilities and lighting
• leave some areas of the park left undefined to allow for experimentation by future artists
• develop a salmon-friendly experimental tidal garden

Broad Street entrance pavilion.

image by Seattle Art Museum

Design Refinements

• clearly articulate the differences between the major entrances to the park
• reexamine the concrete walls along Elliott Avenue and to find ways to make them not as large and oppressive
• redesign the fence along Western so that it is wrought iron and that people may see through it into the park