I discovered a massive omission in local parks master planning: it fails to discuss architecture and design in an overt way

I am on the board of a park in Salt Lake City.  It's an odd governmental construction in that it's owned by both the city and county, but run (theoretically) by an independent board.  The city and county jointly fund the park.  The county parks department is contracted to maintain it.  So city elected officials seem to think it is the responsibility of the county while the county officials, because the park is in the City, see it more as a city facility.

This has led to a severe underfunding of capital improvements--the two governments run on different processes and cycles for capital improvement funding, and I have been addressing this since I joined the board last year.

Generally, the park grounds are decently maintained, but the structures have been neglected for awhile.  

We are aiming to start replacing the pavilions--there are seven.  And the proposed new structure is stark, severe and pretty modern.  It doesn't fit.  But we need a narrative to explain why.

What it made me realize is that at the local and state level, there isn't a good understanding,  codification, and application of park architectural planning history to parks master planning.  

It never occurred to me, when reading park master plans, that architecture is never mentioned as an element, although of course it makes up the bulk of discussion in specific plans for buildings.

NPS rustic.  Park architectural design across the United States was initiated by the National Park Service through their development of a building construction program in the big Western national parks, starting in 1916, when NPS was created.

The style, called NPS rustic, features natural materials primarily stone and wood, with a focus on the use of regionally significant materials like flagstone or river rocks, cedar wood, red rock, etc.

The basic thrust of the style is to snugly fit buildings into nature and the landscape, rather than for the buildings to stick out. (Separately, the Forest Service has a great Built Environment Image Guide, organized by region.)

The approach prioritizes “architecture that is of and respectful of the natural landscape.” The first statement of policy for NPS called for “harmonizing improvements such as roads, trails, and buildings with nature."

This approach influenced other federal agencies dealing with public lands, especially the Forest Service, which like NPS, developed and published a wide variety of design guidance.

Railroad park tourism.  Park rustic has antecedents in railroad tourism endeavors.  

To promote tourism-based ridership, railroads focused a lot of attention on developing national parks as destinations, and even before the Park Service existed, constructed lodges, hotels and other buildings using the rustic style. (Note that the railroads were a driving force in the creation of the National Park Service, because of how important parks-related tourism was to their business.)

As visitorship increased, the park rustic architectural style influenced people's perceptions of how a park was “supposed to be” presented.  

Furthermore, it is likely that park officials and stakeholders from around the country visited these national parks, experienced the structures and the way they were integrated into the landscape, took these lessons and ideas back home, and aimed to implement a form of park rustic style appropriate in their local situation and context.

The New Deal as a transmission mechanism of park architectural style.  But this was accelerated in the 1930s.  New Deal works efforts, especially by the Civilian Conservation Corps, constructed many parks projects, not just on federal lands, but in state and local park systems too.

This not only resulted in more buildings and exemplary projects, but in the dissemination and adoption of the rustic approach to park architecture, its use of natural materials and its embrace of the landscape at the state and local level. 

CCC did not develop its own design guidance, it used technical assistance manuals developed by NPS and the Forest Service.

Rustic peaked before WWII and the new postwar style of "rustic modern."  The rustic style's application peaked during the New Deal.  Construction of parks projects ended with the onset of World War II and didn't pick up again until the mid 1950s.

The postwar design approach we could call "rustic modern" in that new construction techniques, materials like metal, concrete and expansive use of glass, prefabricated building components, and the modern approach to architecture were joined to the rustic style.

The aim is still to use natural materials and design and site buildings harmoniously within the landscape.  

Red Rock Canyon Visitor Center, Nevada.

Further modernizing park building style through the use of manufactured structures.  Whether they overtly discuss this or not, the rustic and rustic-modern style is the dominant architectural approach to creating park structures at all levels--federal, state, and local.

At the same time, for a variety of reasons local park systems are wont to speed up design and construction by using prefabricated structures.  Such structures have the advantage of lower cost compared to one off construction and are easier to maintain.  Firms producing these structures market heavily to park systems, exhibit at national conferences, etc.

The problem with this approach is that as building design has become more the "architecture of nowhere," with few design cues drawn from the immediate built environment and land use context, the nowhere style is creeping into the design of structures manufactured for parks.

But parks are still very much defined by their landscape, they have distinctive landscapes and land use contexts.  As a result the design of nowhere is inappropriate.  Plenty of parks still incorporate new or replacement buildings that are more rustic than they are modern.

The land use and viewshed context for Sugar House Park in Salt Lake City.

Flickr photo by Steven Vance.

Sugar House Park landscape design and architecture.  Sugar House Park's landscape is decidedly manmade.  The "pond" is a flood control device.  The site, which had been a prison, and I presume pretty flat, was sculpted with hills--it's the only park in the center city that has hills as a unique feature.

WRT Sugar House Park's architecture, I'd call it park rustic pastiche.  

The pavilions are a mix of rustic and modern with wood, stone, and metal roofs.  We have an outdoor education building that is cinder block outside, but incorporates some elements of park rustic inside including a charming stone fireplace, and other brick and wood elements.  

And even though the park was constructed after 1955, it has patios on either side of the creek that look like they could have been constructed by a CCC work crew.

The viewshed is iconic, looking towards the Wasatch Front Mountain Range.  The landscape design deserves to be treated with respect when new buildings are considered.

Conclusion.  Without a clear understanding and codification of a park's landscape design, land use context, stylistic approach to the built environment, and viewshed (if applicable), it's easy to default to "modern" buildings.  

Not having these elements defined in parks master plans makes it hard to maintain a consistent approach to architecture that is in keeping with the architectural and landscape history of parks.  

What I am calling inconsistent = pastiche.

Going forward, definition of design values need to be added to parks master planning processes across the United States.