With West End Square, Dallas gets a (very) smart park

Parks and technology are terms that we generally do not associate with one another. Parks are the realm of nature, and technology does not belong there. Incidentally, the city park developed from its roots in the 19th century.

In our digital age, however, in which our pockets overflow with computing power that would have been unthinkable just a few decades ago, this dichotomy is obsolete. The technology that is changing the way we inhabit the built and natural surroundings of the city is indispensable, a process that the pandemic has only accelerated.

The so-called smart city, where technology is an ubiquitous part of city design and tracks every imaginable metric in the name of efficiency, is a frightening prospect that requires vigilance. But a new “smart park” downtown, West End Square, is a model of how the delicate relationship between the urban landscape and our connected way of life could be managed.

The $ 7.55 million park is aptly located in the heart of the West End Historic District, the city’s burgeoning silicon business hub. It replaces a former surface car park bordered on its north side by the Spaghetti Warehouse (built in 1893 and currently being refurbished) and by North Market, North Record and Corbin Street on its east, west and south sides.

West End Square is the second of four parks developed by the not-for-profit Parks for Downtown Dallas founded by Robert W. Decherd, chairman, president, and chief executive of AH Belo Corporation, parent company of The Dallas Morning News. The first, Pacific Plaza Park, opened in 2019.

The design is by Field Operations, the New York-based studio founded by James Corner and best known as the High Line landscape architects. The company’s other projects include the redesign of Chicago’s Navy Pier and Freshkills Park, a reclamation of a 2,200-acre landfill on New York’s Staten Island. As these projects suggest, the integration of natural ecologies in the urban context was a central theme of the studio’s work.

The community work desk and charging station in West End Square Park in Dallas on Friday March 19, 2021. The park is preparing to welcome visitors on March 26. (Juan Figueroa)

So what exactly does it mean to be a “Smart Park”? For one, it’s Wi-Fi enabled, so visitors can connect to the Internet to work or play. A 15-meter-long communal work table under a shady pergola is equipped with wireless charging stations and conventional sockets to power our ubiquitous devices. There is both free and fixed seating – in the form of long wooden benches – and the table height is adjusted for wheelchair users.

An “innovation arcade” runs along the Market Street side of the park; here the pergola is equipped with a slat attachment with “plug and play” rigging to accommodate art installations and other presentation equipment. (The inaugural project, Antibodies, by Montreal-based artist Daniel Iregui and sponsored by Dallas art group Aurora, is on view through April 4th.)

Much of the park’s infrastructure is controlled by sensors. At night, when the park is closed, the lighting drops to 10% of the default value – this saves electricity and respects the neighbors – but when movement is detected, the lights turn on again to illuminate the area where this movement is detected will measure a comfort and safety. The plantings are also usually small, so that the space is always clearly visible, which certainly relieves anxious parents.

West End Square in downtown Dallas, Texas on Thursday, February 11, 2021. (Lawrence Jenkins)

Sensors also monitor the plantings, control irrigation levels, track soil moisture and notify the city remotely if there are any problems in the system.

The park is doing its best to meet the inevitable problem of technology: obsolescence. “We don’t know what’s going to happen next,” says Decherd. Flexibility is integrated into the infrastructure, with additional cable ducts – if there is any cabling in the future.

“We’re thinking about smart in a bigger context,” says Isabel Castilla, who led the field operations project. “An intelligent park reacts to its immediate context in relation to the weather in order to create a space that is comfortable for its users in all seasons and that is sustainable in its planting and choice of materials.”

A void, filled

The smartest thing about this park has nothing to do with technology. It’s the location. The West End was previously a place without a place. The historic district has museums, restaurants, shops, and apartment buildings – but no real place for the public to gather in peace and enjoy the surroundings. The only green space in the area is Dealey Plaza, which is on the periphery, spanning a high-speed corridor, and is more of a tourist attraction than a real park.

West End Square fills this void, nestled in the neighborhood of red-brick warehouses and light-colored manufacturing architecture from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. “It opens up to the city and you have this view of the skyline as if you had photographed it,” says Decherd. In fact, it features postcard views of the pyramidal top of Fountain Place and the staggered rectangles of the Bank of America Tower looming over the adjacent, low-rise historic buildings.

Porch swings in West End Square Park in Dallas on Friday, March 19, 2021. (Juan Figueroa)

Inside, the park is roughly divided into two zones: an interactive area that tracks the perimeter of the square, and a more passive inner garden, which is intended for strolling and thinking.

The interactive rooms lie in the shade of the pergola and are defined by a path made of bricks that are laid out in a herringbone pattern. “We wanted the edge of the park to feel integrated into its context,” says Castilla.

Interactive features include ping-pong and foosball tables, as well as a series of seven porch-style swings (four singles and three long enough for several people) that run along the western edge of the square. These are swings for adults, although children will no doubt enjoy them too. Your freedom of movement is restricted in height, but then the point is not to step into the sky, but to achieve a little relaxing movement.

The Innovation Arcade in West End Square Park in Dallas.(Juan Figueroa)

On the opposite side of the square, facing the “Innovationspassage”, there is a semicircular stepped bench that can serve as a mini amphitheater.

All the fixed furniture in the park – the swings, the work table and the benches – are made of heavy slats made of reddish Brazilian ironwood. Benches are surprisingly comfortable, with thick backs and gently angled tops so you can support your elbows and stretch your arms out comfortably like a pasha.

The reddish wood is both attractive and resilient, a dense type that will last, and coated to prevent damage from rodents, insects, people, and water. Should problems arise, the modular lamellar construction makes maintenance almost child’s play. “They are like really chic Ikea,” says Jim Shipley, project manager for the Beck Group, which carried out the design. “You can just take one out and replace it.”

Lessons from the pandemic

The more contemplative interior of the park is criss-crossed by meandering sidewalks and a small meadow, ideal for picnics, but too small for athletics. There’s only one fully grown tree, a large crepe myrtle at the southwest end of the park, which somehow managed to outlive the site’s former life as a parking lot.

In the middle of the park, surrounded by a bench, there is an office area that is now small but growing rapidly and providing plenty of shade. Elsewhere, the square is littered with Mexican sycamore maples, chinkapin oaks, and plum trees. The plant species were all selected for durability.

The water feature in West End Square Park in Dallas.(Juan Figueroa)

There’s also a fountain, a humble black granite table that looks like a sculpture by Isamu Noguchi. Depending on the conditions, it can either create a pleasant acoustic trickle or a cooling mist.

Although the park was designed before (and during) the pandemic, it hit the zeitgeist perfectly of this time as we are looking for alternatives that will allow us to function outside of our homes and offices.

“Ultimately, when the pandemic was peaking, the few places people could go to were parks,” says Castilla. “And what the pandemic has done is to raise awareness of investing in parks and public spaces, because as humans we need the opportunity to be with greenery and other people.”

That’s smart thinking, not just for the inner city.

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