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Gateway Park: Trail Mix
Gateway Park: Trail Mix
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Other Projects by Roger Sherman Architecture + Urban Design
Gateway Park: Trail Mix
Type
SIZE
10,000 sqft - 25,000 sqft
BUDGET
$1M - 5M
TRAIL MIX, a new public space and recycling center to Toledo, Ohio, establishes a bridge between art and urban revitalization, public space and public works, landscape materials (ecology) with consumer products (economy). Its intent is to harness and celebrate urban change through the use of products/materials that play an everyday role in the ecology and economy of Toledo—and that are responsive to changes in both its environmental and market conditions—in particular through the cycle of distribution, use, collection and reuse. Linking itself to Toledo’s history as a major center of material distribution, the project subtly re-enacts this by visually and commercially engaging the thousands of present-day Toledoans who drive that very route each weekday on their way to work.A series of sweeping embankments are strategically threaded along either side of the highway, and between the exit lanes that divert cars to a choice of alternate local destinations. The surfaces of the embankments are striated by a mix of different materials, natural and artificial, which are arranged in such a way as to “turn on” in response to a particular series of environmental conditions/stimuli: snow, rain, wind, artificial light/headlights, darkness/night, birds, and sun/heat. As such, these material assemblies harness the environmental (weather) and ecological (migration) dynamics of the immediate site. They also fuse these phenomena with the past and present material history of Toledo, integrating (curating) local production techniques and economies. These include: Pilkington windshield Mud Hen baths, Koerber’s beer bottle water/ ice cascades, mulch-filled flora sacks, woven heat-sensitive tire treads, salt graphics, birdfeeders (for coots), reflector furrows, and fiber optic prairie grass (fescue).In a form of commerce intended to address the high volume of auto traffic passing through the site, five of the embankments are backed by a “vending/collection wall” where consumers may either purchase or dispose of materials that are manufactured, used, collected or distributed by the City of Toledo or noteworthy Toledo businesses: road salt (Division of Streets), mulch (Division of Forestry); flowers (Division of Recreation/ Urban Beautification program); recyclables (plastic/tires/cans—Division of Solid Waste); glass (Pilkington windshields).By means of revenue drawn from the interim use of the site as a community garden, as well as from the 2 billboards and the material sales, the project has been conceived of “to grow itself”: to generate some of the funds for its own construction and for the completion of later phase work.
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