This proposal aims to inject a multi-use connective complex into two adjacent city blocks in downtown Salt Lake City. Despite the utopian ideals that spawned the city’s conception, early visions of a promised land were soon replaced with the overly pragmatic tenets of need, availability, and function, shaping the city as we know it today; the last fertile grounds have since been haphazardly relegated to the urban in-between. This project uses these interstitial spaces to re-establish utopian ideals by resurrecting a lost urban topography, encouraging the return of natural phenomena as a benevolent guiding force towards positive human-scale development. Existing urban schema in the region present obstacles to attaining this ideal state: large streets and blocks inhibit pedestrian activity, making the city difficult to grasp. Ideally, this proposal would serve as a pilot study to revitalize downtown Salt Lake City, block by block, in a manner that honors nature and the human experience.

The initial foundation of this proposal is a resurrection of the region’s endemic landscape; the site’s interstitial spaces would take the form of Utah’s rolling topography. Beneath this topographical layer, functional street-level programming like structure, parking, and city amenities will take root. Above this landscaped complex, a public plinth would be lofted in mid-air and connected to the ground plane with ample vertical circulation. The plinth would be supported by towers programmed to replace buildings displaced by the topographical resurrection. Navigating the project would be a hybrid experience between an organic, flowing landscape and a bustling urban environment, framed in vast, narrow vignettes that approximate the experience of a canyon. By densifying and elevating, we reintroduce human agency to the site, employing interstitial urban cracks as seeds for growth to build on the utopian foundation of Salt Lake City.

Blocks 69 & 70 contain some very important historical buildings that will be saved at all costs, primarily located in one area of the site. To prepare the blocks for this new urbanistic approach we determine the buildings that have value in their exact current position including historic, beautiful, and culturally prominent buildings. We eliminate the rest, for now. The first step once the site is prepared is allowing an endemic resurrection of natural landscape. All intermediate spaces are flooded with a natural Utah topography, flush with endemic flora, fauna, and landscape forms. The contrast between built and natural becomes evident as children sled between buildings and runners take strides down slopes from the roofs. From any vantage point in the city this is beautiful. We fill the space underneath this introduced landscape with necessary functional program like parking, structure, and city amenities.
Next, we loft a public plinth above the old city and connect it to the people with vertical circulation located between the remaining city structures. This public floating island is densely filled with necessary program for a sustainable society ranging from farming, entertainment venues, public gathering spaces, restaurants and shops, flexible public open space, and green landscape.
Once transported to the plinth, all necessary public program is provided in an environment of human designated exterior “neighborhoods” that are inherently beautiful in their human creation patterns and setting upon a floating utopia. Wandering through the Salt Lake City sky leads the users through orchards, flower gardens, family farms, expansive plazas, and reflective lakes.