2005 ASLA Professional Awards

GENERAL DESIGN AWARD OF HONOR

Medical School Campus Underground Parking Garage, Palo Alto, CA
Peter Walker and Partners, Berkeley, CA

Strong legacy of landscape architecture at Stanford . . .incredible for a university to make a decision to do this . . .evocative of a different place.
           2005 Professional Awards Jury Comments

Pasteur Drive connects Sand Hill Road to the Stanford University Hospital, designed by Edward Durell Stone, and a soon-to-be-renovated forecourt fountain by Thomas Church. An earlier planning study by Peter Walker and Partners called for a two-block orchard of olive trees that would lead to the more formal forecourt. Diagonally crossing the orchard would be a reconstruction of Governor’s Lane, a historic riding trail formerly lined with rows of mature eucalyptus, now changed to sycamore. When it was determined that the parking structure should be below ground, the landscape architects were asked to design a landscape over the garage that would retain the sense of openness and the earlier agricultural character of the campus. A minimum soil depth was desired for cost reasons and so that the garage could be as near existing grade as possible.

Just as the Pasteur entrance in the master plan was designed to be reminiscent of the earlier farm atmosphere of the campus, so the new garage design references agricultural history by means of seat-high wooden walls, which recall the wooden slews, water coolers, and agricultural retaining walls of early California ranches and farms. These seat walls, made of ipe wood, which weathers naturally to a soft silvery gray, form large separated boxes that create a rustic park of alleys and courts. In the boxes that lie over the garage structure, the shallow soil is planted with a complex mix of California native meadow grasses and wildflowers that bloom throughout the spring and the long Palo Alto summer. In fall, the grasses turn the golden color that is a hallmark of the open California grasslands. In areas beyond the garage, which have greater soil depth, are planted large specimen live oaks, which relate to the native oaks that have been preserved throughout the Medical Campus. All of the required soil is placed above current street grade.

This “boxed meadow,” ambiguously synthetic and natural, provides a major new accessible open space in the center of the Medical Campus with courts and walkways lighted for safe and convenient pedestrian use on warm summer nights.