Family, play at heart of park plans
Discovery Green, Hermann to get major upgrades
The latest developments of Houston’s ongoing green renaissance will transform two of the city’s busiest parks in ways that make them more attractive than ever to families with children.
Designs by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates for Hermann Park and Hargreaves Associates for Discovery Green also aim to better connect green spaces to the densifying city, with more inviting gateways and wider-open views. Visitors to both parks come from all over the Houston area and reflect the city’s diversity.
The play areas at the two parks are going to be more packed than ever, with enticing, 21st-century experiences that are as much about discovery as exercise. (Swings and Jungle Jims are out; imaginative structures geared to kids of different ages are in.)
On Thursday, Van Valkenburgh’s Matthew Urbansky unveiled a vision for transforming the most timeworn corner of Hermann Park into the Commons, a 24-acre wonderland with undulating topography; pavilions, picnic tables and shaded seating within a more diverse, wildlifefriendly native landscape; and a complex new
play area.
The first project of the park’s 20-year master plan to be executed, the Commons will unfold along Fannin and Cambridge streets, adjacent to the Texas Medical Center and close to developing technology hubs. Still in the design phase, with a price tag of $40 million to be raised by the Hermann Park Conservancy, it is likely five years away from completion. Conservancy president Doreen Stoller said 25 percent of all the funds will be reserved to support the increased maintenance the new amenities will require.
‘Shared experience’
The elements of the state-ofthe-art playground designed 25 years ago are “exactly right,” Urbansky said. “We’re just making it better, bringing in contemporary thinking. A lot has changed about how we think about play since Hermann Park’s first master plan was created.” That was understatement.
The Van Valkenburgh team is working with Danish designers to develop inventive play structures such as a “Gorilla Forest” and tunnels shaped like animals. “We have scoured the Earth to find the best equipment,” Urbansky said. He compared an attraction called the “Water Lab” to a science project; children will manipulate water flow on a multitiered “Aquadrat” with pumps and other devices.
The landscape itself also will be playful and ADA accessible, featuring dry and wet areas that incorporate a “Moon Crater,” a “Rocket Slide” (a nod to a much-loved slide that disappeared years ago), a “Splash Cove” and a bayou system with sand. (Anticipating parents’ needs, a new cabana will provide space to change into dry clothes.) It’s also flood-friendly, with flows designed to drain into the park’s McGovern lake.
Stoller appreciates how the interactive elements will require children to work together, to make water flow or scramble up a “meteor.” “Providing this shared experience for children of all backgrounds and abilities is important to our city,” she said.
Hills have become obligatory in Houston parks, favored for their elevated views. The Hermann Park design offers several — although not where they are now. To Urbansky, the wide-open mound that holds Sharon Engelstein’s monumental, bubbly pink “Dillidiidea” looks like a visual “impediment.” (It will be moved.)
Architect Marlon Blackwell is designing new picnic pavilions and a dining pavilion; and the picnic area will have grilling stations. “If you want to make people happy, put in picnic tables,” Urbansky said. “And if you want to make them really happy, add grills. Things don’t have to be complicated.”
Stoller said the plan developed into more than she initially envisioned. “When we started the project, I thought ‘Oh, it will be nice to clean up this part of the park and improve the habitats,’ ” she said. “I didn’t realize how transformational it would be for so many different visitors — children, tech workers, medical center employees and patient families.” The community’s most requested amenity — a dog park — is being developed at a 2.4-acre site across the park, off South MacGregor Way along Brays Bayou.
Urbansky’s presentation pleased the Hermann Park Conservancy’s board.
“I like many things about it,” said board chairman David Ruiz, “and one is that they have taken input from the community. That’s a really important corner with a bad history, but it has so much potential for kids and families.”
Discovery Green upgrades
Meanwhile, downtown, the Discovery Green Conservancy has begun a $12 million upgrade of its wildly successful 12-acre park, which is just 11 years old. The original playground has been dismantled, and a temporary replacement will open in about two weeks.
The new playground will have twice as many play structures as the original, along with a new area for birthday parties and a new hill to roll down. New, lighted signage will be installed at all of the park’s corners, with most attention given to the northeast corner, which is being redesigned as an important gateway. The upgrade also includes enlarged restrooms; new, brighter and more energy-efficient lighting; and a new allée of trees.
About 1.5 million people visit Discovery Green each year, 200 percent more than the park’s planners imagined, said president and park director Barry Mandel. The park, which cost $125 million, has also been an economic engine, helping to spark a $1.2 billion neighborhood building boom; creating a vibrant nightlife that didn’t exist in the area a decade ago.
“No one anticipated 10 years ago that Discovery Green would be as popular as it is,” said landscape architect Mary Margaret Jones, a Hargreaves senior partner. “The context of Discovery Green has changed so much since we built it,” she said.
She cited a berm at the park’s northeast corner that was originally created as a visual shield from surrounding wasteland; it needed to change. “We want to open our arms now and connect to the active, growing and bustling downtown community.”
However, another hill adjacent to what is now the Marriott Marquis unexpectedly became a favorite spot for visitors of all ages. Kids love rolling down it, and Jones isn’t going to disturb that.
“A little bit of topography goes a long way in Houston,” she said. “Maybe play doesn’t have to be so scripted. Which is funny, because playground safety codes are going in the opposite direction.” Both designers said today’s playgrounds need to give children a place to learn boundaries and gauge risks such as, “Can I jump this high?”
When the Discovery Green project is complete in about seven months, kids will have more than twice as many play structures to explore there, with designated areas for those ages 2 to 5 and 5 to 12. “Anythng to get them to play, imagine and move — to entice them to put down whatever device they have in their hands,” Mandel said.
Interactive art
They will also be interacting more with art. Doug Hollis’ popular “Mist Tree” will be better incorporated into the playground, and beginning in March, Discovery Green will lease a major art installation from the High Museum in Atlanta for six months. Geared to children, Yuri Suzuki’s “Sonic Playground” consists of six interactive, trumpetlike structures that manipulate sound.
Mandel said the Discovery Green Conservancy has established a fund to bring a continually evolving series of public art installations to the park during the next five years. “Gust,” an interactive installation by the Mexican collective Cocolab made of pinwheels that line the park’s Oak Allée, was the first; it’s up through March 20.
Mandel said the four major philanthropic foundations that launched Discovery Green 11 years ago have “all reinvested in the next 10 years,” although the conservancy has about $2 million more to raise to meet its upgrade goals.
The Hermann Park Conservancy is just beginning the campaign for the Commons, but Ruiz was optimistic. “With this group of supporters, everything is doable,” he said.