Sasaki
Sasaki has a long history of working on significant civic places: from participation in multiple U.S. embassies around the world, to decades of work on the U.S. Capitol Campus, to planning and design of state capitol campuses across the country. These icons cross generations, outlive design trends and political movements, and stand as the most fundamental physical spaces of our democracy.
In recent years, Sasaki has worked on capitol campuses from Minnesota to Texas and Wyoming to Washington, D.C.. These design assignments are challenging because of the strong historic legacy that these places have, the demands on new security measures, and the explicit requirement for free speech assembly. However, they also present an opportunity to rethink how these landscapes and districts integrate into the surrounding city fabric and provide spaces for governments to function and for daily life.
In approaching capitol districts, we at Sasaki look back to understand what the land or communities looked like before the creation of the ceremonial capitol landscape. Frequently, these districts were carved out of existing neighborhoods and natural features were eliminated. History is often reduced to a too-narrow ‘period of significance’ which marks when original design intent was last intact. This designation restricts amendments to the existing design and limits how new interventions lay atop historic patterns.
At Sasaki, we respect history and legacy, however we are not historic preservationists. We see the landscape as an ever-evolving palimpsest of ideas influenced by society over time. We believe there is room for addition, or subtraction, in an effort to make places more relevant to current needs.
Many of America’s capitol campuses were created in and around the time of the City Beautiful movement when America was drawing inspiration from broad axial relationships and grand civic scales of European capitals. Though striking, that era of American capitol area planning was intertwined with a legacy of neighborhood displacement and, later, urban renewal. Well into the middle of the 20th century, urban renewal practices in many of these capital cities included massive expanses of surface parking and overlays of major highway systems that separated capitol campuses from their communities. Due to their isolation and single-use nature, many of these campuses suffer from a lack of vitality and community ownership. Lastly, since state-owned land doesn’t pay taxes, capitol districts can become economic stressors in their cities.
Given the importance of these places and the many opportunities for interventions that make them more livable, more vibrant, and more inclusive, we seek out partnerships with clients around the country in order to revitalize these landscapes as places of modern expression and community voice.
Our work at the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center, a collaboration with Callison/RTKL, layered a brand new programmatic element into a historically significant landscape. The new building was cut into the land, and the plaza that was designed for assembly was placed back on top. An original Frederick Law Olmsted landscape, the new design paid particular attention to preservation of existing trees and the original view axis. Elegant ramps and stairs that subtly follow the grading provide universal access and mask major security features within the site design. This project represents the way that significant contemporary elements can be integrated into historic places.
The State of Texas had a huge cost burden of leased properties around the metropolitan area of Austin. In an effort to reduce this burden and increase activation of the downtown capitol campus, Sasaki assisted in the creation of a master plan that redeveloped significant surface parking facilities into a new state office and mixed-use district. As part of this move, parking was consolidated into an underground structure that sits below a vacated section of Congress Avenue. That portion of the street has been converted into a pedestrian mall that connects the Capitol Building to UT Austin’s campus. The result is a well integrated public realm that contributes to the fabric of Austin’s downtown parks and open spaces.
In St. Paul, Minnesota, Sasaki worked with the Capitol Area Architectural and Planning Board to craft a capitol mall design framework that focused on making that capitol district, roughly 125 acres, more welcoming to Minnesotans. The plan focuses on the Capitol Mall, where new pedestrian pathways, event infrastructure, cultural expressions, and daily life amenities are layered into the historic landscape. New elements include a visitor center/classroom with food, beverage and public restrooms and the development of a multi-generational community park from a passive hillside landscape at Cas Gilbert park. The plan incorporates subtle security measures, universal accessibility, and more sustainable and geographically relevant landscapes. The overall vision is to increase vitality and better connect the district to the surrounding neighborhoods.
Although not a Sasaki project, Norman Foster’s intervention at the Reichstag in Berlin represents what we see as a tasteful architectural intervention into a historically significant structure. The seat of the German Bundestag, originally constructed between 1884 and 1894, the building received waves of damage over many decades. In the late 1990s, Norman Foster’s office completed a major renovation that modernized the interior of the structure and inserted an iconic glass dome that can be seen from all sides. The subtle yet recognizable layering of modern design aesthetics and materials atop the iconic neo-renaissance structure demonstrates how old and new can be seamlessly brought together to achieve a common purpose.
We also see the work of the Civic Center Conservancy in Denver, Colorado exemplifying a responsive, contemporary approach to civic landscapes. This not-for-profit organization manages a major civic landscape within Downtown Denver that includes a municipal City Park and is adjacent to two state owned green spaces including the State Capitol grounds. The amazing thing about the Conservancy is how they have brought major events to the grounds that span multiple jurisdictional boundaries including city and state right-of-way and city and state open spaces parcels. The Conservancy assists in marketing and event coordination with the various jurisdictional partners. The use of “historic” landscapes for everything from 420 festivals, championship celebrations, political rallies, to daily life activities like food truck rodeos has brought life and vibrancy to Downtown.
Capitol districts in the U.S. and elsewhere have historically been monocultures of land use and landscape. Their incorporation into our cities has not always been elegant or successful; they face challenges of daily life activation, safety and security, economic vitality, historic preservation, cultural expression, and sustainability and resilience.
We believe that there are immense opportunities for these spaces within our cities and we encourage incredibly creative and rigorous evaluations of the role of these spaces beyond being a seat for government.
Capitol districts need to use creative partnerships that cut across functional boundaries and responsibilities to achieve greater outcomes. These spaces need to express contemporary culture and not just legacies from the past; they need to celebrate their historic frameworks but leave space for modern interventions. They also need to provide opportunities for first amendment expressions in addition to spaces for everyday life. These spaces need to weave in native landscape strategies while respecting the need for durability.
These spaces should not be frozen in time, but evolve with us.
Sasaki principal Mark Dawson discussed qualities of resilient communities alongside fellow members of American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) and the Environmental & Energy Study Institute (EESI), a Congress-created independent non-profit
The transformed Plaza will serve as a welcoming civic heart for generations of Bostonians
