Living Future: June 2024 Roundtable

The June Living Future Roundtable discussed the role of the design team, specifically for the redesign of Franklin Park, as a system and included close community collaboration with users of the park and residents of the surrounding area. The roundtable discussed how the design team, clients, community, and other individuals and factors made up an expansive system that worked together for this process, and additionally focused on the interconnected relationships within the system and their influence. Lydia Cook, Landscape Architect at Reed-Hilderbrand kicked off the discussion by framing the project as a whole. Designed by Frederick Law Olmstead, the park contains three main elements: Ante Park for active recreation, Country Park for passive enjoyment of scenery, and Glen Road which functions as a throughway for traffic. When Olmstead designed the park, he had the future in mind. While the park was initially outside of the center of the city, it is now the geographic center of Boston, demonstrating how much the city has evolved over time.

Mayrah Udvardi, Senior Architect and Educator at MASS Design Group elaborates on the evolution of the park through the lens of stewardship. Her current work in the redesign of Franklin Park takes into account the current state of the park as well focusing on aspects of historical importance that needed to be addressed, including indigenous tribes, politics behind the park and creation of the park, the initial purpose of benefiting only white, upper class communities, and that the park was much less invested in after communities of color began settling in the area around it. Due to the lack of government involvement and maintenance in the park, maintenance began to shift to be in the hands of the community itself, before the park began to be reinvested in in the 90s. The collaborative stewardship of the individuals in the community was an extremely important testament to the park and emphasized the importance for designers to work with the community on the park.Lydia then shares that for this project, the team was split into three key factors, land, people, and city, which were not segmented but emphasized the three groups they wanted to focus on. Though, all of these factors worked in close collaboration in order to gain a more holistic review.

Rhiannon Sinclair, Urban Planner at Agency Landscape + Planning then shifts the focus to the design process which was meant to take 18 months but was extended to 45 months, not only because of the COVID pandemic, but also because the city wanted to make sure all of the three major principles were taken into consideration. An initial limitation was gathering information from people who used the park, so the team casted the net wide, broadened engagement, and tried to reach people in every way they used communication and information sharing. They worked to build awareness, through newsletters and signage, and ended up getting 6,435 participants that were representative of the neighborhoods that made up Franklin Park. Using the information they gathered, they took concerns and opinions and reflected them in the design, investing in places that make Franklin Park special and expanded spaces for gatherings and events. The plan includes over 25 projects over 20-30 years. One question that was brought up was how the team worked to resolve contradictory needs or claims? The team shared that there was a process of prioritizing and understanding the reasoning behind the concerns, not just the concern alone. The long timeline of the project gave lots of time for iteration for serious review periods and tradeoffs, and they were able to have one on one conversations with people who were worried.

Discussion in the round table continued to how the three different firms were able to work together with the City of Boston and how the design process was able to honor indigenous resources and open communication and collaboration with different cultural groups with histories that haven’t been told. The collaboration in the design process and focus on the three main principles was instrumental in the redesign for Franklin Park, and the future of design must not completely separate design from the significance of the land, community, and context in the city.