As more and more cities go post-industrial, the result is wide swathes of factories and warehouses that sit vacant, occupying valuable land. I’ve written in the past on a factory district in Shenzhen that has transformed from industrial use to creative and cultural uses over the course of a mere 40 years, but many cases of this adaptive urbanism have a much slower trajectory than the most dynamic of Chinese cities.
A beautiful view of Seattle (Photo: 130124.009 by Adam Nowek)
Case in point: Seattle’s Gas Works Park. The site was the former home of a gasification planet run by the Seattle Gas Light Company for the majority of the twentieth century. Gasification is actually one of the more sustainable fossil fuel-based methods of producing electricity, but Seattle made the shift to natural gas in 1956, effectively putting the gasification plant out of business.
After the city acquired the land with the stated intentions of converting the toxic wasteland into a public park, Richard Haag crafted a design that was both controversial to the public clamouring for a new public park and difficult to implement due to high toxicity levels in the soil. Rather than destroying the plant completely and creating a more ‘natural’ park, Haag chose to keep parts of the plant, as an homage to the inner-city’s industrial past and as a way to give the park a unique aesthetic.
Disused industrial wasteland turned park centrepiece (Photo: 130124.004 by Adam Nowek)
Gas Works Park has been open to Seattleites since 1975, and it is a landmark in effective landscape architecture and park design. Rather than incorporating sweeping meadows or grand ponds, Gas Works Park is special because of its explicit acknowledgment of the industrial heritage that many cities are only recently starting to acknowledge. The shells of the various structures that once existed on-site are maintained but not refurbished or reconceived: instead, they are stripped of their industrial capabilities and made into one of the world’s unique park settings. In the same vein as Berlin’s Tempelhof airport-to-park conversion, Gas Works Park proves that drastic land-use changes does not always require demolition.
Located in Wallingford in the northern central region of Seattle, Gas Works Park is close enough to the heart of the city to take advantage of the vistas of Downtown and the iconic Space Needle, yet far enough removed from it on the shores of Lake Union that it has a certain urban tranquility. A small hill next to the water offers a great space to fly a kite, watch passersby, and enjoy the views of the city. While accessing the park through the considerable parking lot and shameful public transportation in the area reminds you that Seattle needs to rein in its dependence on cars, the trek to the park is worth the journey.
A cement tunnel, exposed (Photo: 130124.001 by Adam Nowek)
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