The master plan reintroduces a forest in the heart of Seattle, giving homage to the past while reminding present-day and future residents of the city’s natural habitat. Embracing social life at multiple scales, an interactive wall at the park’s edge contains “event boxes” with different functions – cafés, a library, sports facilities, and areas for cultural events. Planned for implementation over decades to come, the project aims to be adaptable to future changes, an objective that is straightforwardly supported by the project’s current minimal interventions and restraint of formal means.

Read project feature in 4th Holcim Awards 2014/2015 (flip-book)

ABF-lab architects won a Holcim Awards Acknowledgement for “In-Closure: Public park and interactive wall for urban revival, Seattle, USA”. The project focuses on social ecology in the context of our creation within the enclosure.

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The winning projects of the Holcim Awards 2014 for North America are at the cutting edge of efficiency and innovation in sustainable construction. The top prize went to a water supply and flood mitigation project in Las Vegas designed by Amy Mielke and Caitlin Taylor. BIG’s urban flood-protection concept for lower Manhattan was conferred the silver Award, and a zero-carbon compostable structure recently on display at MoMA New York designed by David Benjamin received bronze.

Acknowledgement prizes were presented to Sheila Kennedy and J Frano Violich of Kennedy & Violich Architecture of Boston for the Chrysanthemum Building; architects Nader Tehrani and Katherine Faulkner of NADAAA in Boston for the renovation and extension of the University of Toronto’s John H Daniels building; a public park and interactive wall for urban revival in Seattle by Paris-based ABF-lab architects; and to Peter and Hadley Arnold of the Arid Lands Institute, Woodbury University for Divining LA, a digital tool for urban design and water-use planning in Los Angeles.

Watch video of all 4 Acknowledgement prize winners

The question of how to revive civic space is at the core of the submitted entry. The jury, in this regard, greatly values the importance attributed to the very concept of “civitas” and applauds the manner in which this proposition is translated into an exciting piece of landscape architecture – a forest in the midst of the urban fabric encased by peripheral structures accommodating manifold programs. But the design does not stop there since the project’s essential contribution lies most prominently in the almost surreal atmosphere conveyed: trees mirrored in walls, partially transparent walls, or light reflecting on polished surfaces – blurring time-honored distinctions between the domains of the so-called “natural” and “artificial”.

The master plan reintroduces a forest in the heart of Seattle, USA, giving homage to the past while reminding present-day and future residents of the city’s natural habitat. Embracing social life at multiple scales, an interactive wall at the park’s edge contains “event boxes” with different functions – cafés, a library, sports facilities, and areas for cultural events. Planned for implementation over decades to come, the project aims to be adaptable to future changes, an objective that is straightforwardly supported by the project’s current minimal interventions and restraint of formal means.