Client:
Denver Public Schools
Project Description: Gilpin’s campus has an atypical
use pattern due to busy public transportation on the block.
This mandated that the new design work as a cohesive school
campus, as an off-hours park, and as an access way between bus
stops. Pedestrian foot traffic that formerly bisected the site
was re-directed to a new garden path on site’s western
edge. The school’s enclosed campus creates a secure playground
comprised of traditional play, gardens, rock gardens, art elements,
picnic tables, and shady groves.
Conceptual Plan: Gilpin’s playground
design speaks to motion: curving walls, spiraling foot paths,
shifting kinetic art all hint at the mutable, the ephemeral.
Plant materials, grasses especially, wave in the wind. This
idea of flux organizes the traditional play equipment within
a series of interrelated arced play pits. Seat walls, picnic
tables, and boulder enclaves form outdoor classrooms and community
gathering spaces. Integral murals, tiled tables, and kinetic
sculpture punctuate the site. The early childhood education
playground, separated yet integrated, has the richness of the
larger site within its own gardens, grass, shade, and play equipment.
The Gilpin gateway epitomizes the larger site, simultaneously
moving and changing while claiming a firmly grounded identity.
Results: Gilpin Elementary is transformed from
an urban plaza/pedestrian throughway with little identity to
a campus for the school. The large sculptural gateway welcomes
school and community alike to pause and enjoy this campus/neighborhood
park. The project was completed summer, 2003.
