Seattle's parks program has been demolishing a lot of houses lately. Each time it purchases land for a new "pocket park," there's a house that needs to come down. And increasingly, people are choosing to leave portions of the existing foundations to help define public spaces in the park's gardens.


In the park pictured above, most of the foundation had to be demolished. Then the contractors recreated portions of the foundation wall to create a sense of space in the center of the park. As I stand in the middle of this park, I can't help but feel I'm playing house. I imagine the kitchen, the bedrooms, check out the view from the back porch. I feel a little sad for the people who lived here before. Did they want to leave? Were they forced into a smaller house, or into the suburbs? But the walls also make me feel happy. There's a spectacular view from this park, and through someone's selflessness, this private property became democratized, became the property of the everyone. It's not easy to build parks in the city. Something has to die. It's only right to honor this house by celebrating its foundations.

At Gasworks Park, a large concrete wall contains a field. There used to be a big pile of dirt inside these walls, many stories high. Before that, I can't remember what it was, something vaguely industrial, I think. The Parks department sawcut portions of the wall, allowing this aquisition to bleed into the existing Gaswork's park. They left enough of the wall to create a sense of space. Inside, they sculpted the earth into interesting berms, shaped earthen hills designed to contain stormwater runoff. Depending on where you stand on a berm, you either feel contained the walls, or you can look out over them.


There are lots of ways to end the wall too. You can sawcut it, for a crisp entrance. Or, you can break it down in a landscape bed.


These projects show how an existing wall can contribute a sense of space to gardens and parks.

So I'm giddy with excitement about a new property recently aquired by the city. There are a couple of houses on the property, and a network of existing concrete walls. These are no ordinary foundation walls though. They seem to be the remains of a long-gone full-height garage. But absent their roof, they create a series of outdoor rooms with a quality unlike that of any other park I've seen. Consider this outdoor room: It has the bones of a courtyard in an old Italian Piazza. It just needs a little love. I love the windows, no headers, open to the sky. Aren't these walls just itching to be covered with golden hops, or bright red collegiate ivy?


Check out the old driveway. A small grove of trees grows in the middle of it. I love the idea of planting a grove of trees right in the middle of the entrance path. It says: You are entering the domain of the natural world. It speaks of a post-apocalyptic eden.


I saw a similar gesture in Fremont Peak Park. You have to walk around the trees. Check out what it looks like in a finished park:


But what I love best about this property is the story it tells. The family that owned these houses asserted itself on the land, spelled out its name on a hillside, sliced itself into strange, narrow and diagonal spaces with bold rows of trees. It's like a miniature Versailles built by hippy children of a senile timber magnate, a blank checkbook hanging from his limp hand. The only thing by his deathbed is a coffee table book on Picasso - the children memorized it without the guidance of art counselors. In their naivete, they created our little neighborhood Xanadu.






Just to leave this family's footprint in the final design would make this park a magical place.