Lewis Park started as a small, urban green space. Over time, with poor visibility and access limited by overgrown thickets and a lack of public facilities, the park slowly became a jungle. It began to attract homeless encampments, crime and became a dumping ground for litter. In response, the neighborhood formed Friends of Lewis Park — a community volunteer group to restore the park to its natural state and its place as a neighborhood recreational and natural treasure.

"David was an expert facilitator. He was able to receive input from our committee and present the project to the community in a way that elicited great feedback. He then synthesized all of those inputs into visual proposals that elicited further feedback and led us to the final design. We are thrilled with the final product!"

Restoring and re-inviting

After years of clearing invasive plants, litter and overgrown thickets, building trails and restoring native trees and plants, the group was ready to invite the public back to the park. A key element was the need for welcoming signage encouraging access and reflecting the diverse, neighborhood community.

This project had two main aspects. One, was the need to work with the neighborhood and surrounding community and facilitate input into the design process. This resulted in a series of community meetings to encourage and capture ideas and concerns before incorporating them into the final designs in a culturally sensitive manner. The second part was to create appropriate welcoming signage that reflected the neighboring community and its desires.

Community conversations

The first community conversation was a dynamic working dinner with the neighborhood and community. Research, restoration efforts, and community feedback was shared while the group developed ideas on future use and important themes and criteria for the design. Several key questions were, “how can we create a design welcoming to our diverse neighborhood and encourage neighbors and community feel safe to enter?” And, “how can we reflect the natural elements and create a design that suits the site and the diverse communities surrounding it.”

• Community Conversation: Workshop One Documentation (PDF)

Reflecting the neighborhood

Input from the community conversation informed the design development process. It was clear that the signage needed to be part of the site and the natural environment. This led to the decision to use massive granite boulders to place signage on. These appear as natural, organic elements within the landscape rather than imposed or man-made elements.

A single graphic element or icon conveying the native plants within park was also critical. This symbolized the focus on restoring the site to its natural state. Finally, languages stood out as the best way to reflect the diverse neighborhood.

Carved in stone

Fabricating the signage on granite was a major design challenge. This required a great deal of simplification to ensure the letterforms and graphic icon rendered clearly and cleanly when sandblasted into the stone. The diverse styles of the language letterforms also required careful scaling and arrangement to make sure they were readable and legible, especially from a distance.

This led to several design explorations of the letterforms arranged in arcs, circles, and finally, in a spiral. The spiral form also had the distinctive characteristic of drawing the viewer in towards the graphic icon image. The graphic icon images of fern, hemlock, big leaf maple and salmonberry in the center reflected the native plants found within the park. An additional type statement was also added to the back of the boulder to reference and pay respect to the original inhabitants of the land — the Duwamish peoples.

• Community Conversation: Workshop Two Documentation (PDF)

Designing for a community

Designing for a community always makes for an enriching experience. Inviting the community in and facilitating conversations, helped create not only an effective design, but one that reflected the diverse community. This created a sense ownership and a welcoming monument for visitors to this natural urban treasures for ages to come. Lewis Park has finally been restored to it neighboring community.