Honor Award -- Design

Santa Monica BIG (Beach Improvement Group) South Beach
Santa Monica, California

Wallace Roberts & Todd, Inc. with Jody Pinto, Artist

Kathleen Garcia
Principal, Wallace Roberts & Todd, Inc.
1133 Columbia Street
Suite 205
San Diego, CA 92101-3535
Tel: 619-696-9303
Fax: 619-696-7935
kgarcia@sd.wrtdesign.com

Project Purpose: For South Beach, our task was to enhance and celebrate each of its unique characteristics while also forging a cohesive context for the entire six-block area. Located adjacent to the Santa Monica Pier and home to the world-renowned Muscle Beach and Chess Park, South Beach is a hub of human activity, a pedestrian promenade that connects a variety of hotels, concessions and entertainment venues. The $2 6 million of improvements include landscape; pedestrian and bicycle paths; site furnishings and new activity areas such as a children's playground, Muscle Beach, and Chess Park. The improvements to this "human theater" are designed to convey the idea of ebb and flow -- visually and functionally so that the natural beauty, historic character and sheer spectacle of South Beach sparkles with renewed vitality.

Role of lands ape Architect: The landscape architect lead a team of architects, engineers, and an artist in collaboration with the community-city staff and residents through an active process of ideas, programming, design review and celebrations.

Significance: The Santa Monica beach boardwalk lies low in the landscape where the edge is a mere line on the sand, and vies from the edge are of near things -of people, mostly: playing, flexing, promenading, gliding on rollers and wheels or spiking a ball high in the air. From the boardwalk the horizon is implied, the ocean hidden, the sunset interrupted. Yet the boardwalk also ebbs and flows, from sunrise to sunset, with the rhythms of people and their games. It is everyday drama, loud, kinetic, and full of show and delight, opening and closing with the curtain of daily light. The design of the anta Monica boardwalk need not create drama, merely tap it. And, since the boardwalk lacks a suitable balcony: the stage must be created -a collection of open, flexible venues for impromptu people performances.

Furthermore, he recreational elements should not "mark" a site as much as afford the opportunity to "make" a site: choose a section of wall to sit on, to stand on, to jump off of; a section of paving to gather chairs in, to parade through; or a palm among a cluster to sit under, to lean against.