University Circle and the Pedestrian Charrette

CUDC Hosts Landscape Architects for Charrette
CUDC Quarterly, 1:1 (Summer, 2000)

The first weekend in June brought an onslaught of visitors to Cleveland’s University Circle for major shows at the Botanical Garden and the Art Museum. In the midst of all the activity, eight landscape architects were observing the goings-on and concocting proposals for major design interventions in the public realm of Cleveland’s cultural center.The eight designers, representing four internationally known firms, were in Cleveland at the invitation of University Circle, Incorporated with the facilitation of the Urban Design Center for a weekend design charrette entitled "University Circle and the Pedestrian."

After touring the area and attending a public meeting at the Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art on Saturday morning, they worked at the CUDC into the night and presented their freshly drawn ideas in a public session at the Cleveland Institute of Art on Sunday afternoon. The four groups were asked to consider ways to make University Circle a more comprehensible and pedestrian friendly environment. Since the goal of this whirlwind of activity was to produce a wide range of ideas and get some new perspectives on a long standing and complex set of problems, there were no restrictions on the scope of the designers’ proposals.

The charrette participants came from some of the most innovative practices in contemporary landscape architecture, and they produced a range of provocative ideas for the Circle. Interestingly, some common themes emerged. Most notably, all four teams proposed opening up the full length of Doan Brook, which currently runs through the southern part of the district in a covered culvert. All of the participants agreed that the Brook should be restored as part of a network of green spaces leading from Lake Erie to the Shaker Lakes, much as it was before the traffic engineers intervened at mid-century.

The purpose of a "hit and run" session like this is to open up discussion and get people thinking in new and more ambitious ways. By that standard the University Circle charrette was certainly a success, one that the Urban Design Center hopes to replicate for other complex sites in the region. At this stage, of course, the long term effects of the charrette are harder to gauge. It will take a while for University Circle, with its complex constituency of institutions and residents, to digest everything the charrette participants gave them to chew on. The restoration of Doan Brook is probably a lot more likely now than it was a few weeks ago. Will we also see a series of landscaped squares punctuating Euclid Avenue? A thick band of evergreens around the east edge of a circular Wade Oval? One would like to think that good ideas have a way of re-surfacing, just like the brook.

Click on the links below for more on each firm's ideas, some of the images produced in the charrette and links to their websites.

Balmori Associates
Diana Balmori
Ana Maria Torres

Hargreaves Associates
Glen Allen
Kirt Rieder
in collaboration with
Martha Schwartz, Inc.
Martha Schwartz
Paula Meijerink

Wallace, Roberts Todd
Gerald Marston
Eric Tamulonis