context
Dune Peninsula at Point Defiance is a 11-acre park built over a Superfund site. The setting along Puget Sound and the new landscape obscure what was once a slag waste depository for an adjacent copper processing plant. Metro Parks Tacoma and Site Workshop invited our team to create site identification, wayfinding and interpretive graphics for this new park.
CHALLENGe
Greet, guide, and inform visitors by referencing regional connections and the complex historic uses of the site.
Role
Concept Development & Design
Documentation, Programming, & Message Scheduling
Fabrication Management
The project highlights the tension between the site’s productive industrial past and its rich natural surroundings, reflecting the complex identity of Tacoma and its aspirations for the future. Everyone in the region was affected by the smelter; its 571-foot smokestack was a symbol for jobs and an ominous source of widespread pollution. When the smokestack was demolished in 1993, the implosion was witnessed by the community as a celebration of progress.
EXTRA CreditS
AWARDS
2022 Graphis Design Annual Silver Award
2020 APWA Project of the Year
2019 ASLA Washington Chapter Award of Honor
2019 GRAY Awards Landscape Category Winner
