case study: south park heritage trail
The City of Raleigh’s South Park Heritage Trail is an ongoing three mile-long cultural trail project (currently in design) that will help tell the many stories of a critical but rapidly changing historically Black neighborhood and its residents.
art planning diagram
TELLING CRITICAL STORIES
Located within the South Park Cultural District in Downtown Raleigh, the trail will greatly enhance the neighborhood’s visibility by preserving, promoting, and connecting the community’s rich history and its various stories to a much broader audience.
Working as an outdoor living museum of sorts, the cultural trail will focus visitors on various exterior “gallery” spaces/zones featuring clusters of key historic sites as organized by programmatic use/theme.
From Civil Rights and Activism to Black Entrepreneurship, to Education, Arts & Culture, Community Gathering and Arrival/Transportation, these galleries will be linked together by an active and educational color-coded circulation walk.
Various strategically placed “gateways” will serve as breadcrumbs to pique interest and encourage area visitors to explore this vibrant thriving community and all that it has to offer, both historically and in the present day.
proposed storytelling installation
proposed wayfinding
proposed wayfinding gradient system
proposed historical image corridor
proposed wayfinding installation
DOCUMENTING RACISM
Accompanying the overall planning and wayfinding, efforts various “art as signage” installations were designed to be pixelated throughout the project in order to help tell critical site stories in both thoughtful and digestible ways.
Construction “Documents” (LARGE/small) is a series of site-specific placemaking and storytelling installations planned to be located within the formerly “redlined” Arts and Culture and Civic Engagement districts of Raleigh’s South Park neighborhood.
These installations draw upon the racist urban design “redlining” policies that were once rampant throughout American cities during (and even after) segregation.
Abstract steel “crime scene” outlines depict blocks of building elevations that once previously occupied the now destroyed neighborhood districts in both 1 to 1 scale (LARGE) and abstracted miniature (small) - calling much needed attention to these acts of urban design “revitalization” and the lives of those who were so grievously affected as a result.
The abstracted miniature “ghost houses” of the Civic Engagement district read as immersive yet “empty” signage at first glance however upon closer inspection becoming apparent that they represent actual building demolition data in addition to “framing” the long untold story of a once thriving community who homes were destroyed. This installation is designed to be viewed from the various eye-levels so that any driver, cyclist, or pedestrian is constantly met with the scope of the destruction.
As a counterpoint to the scale of its sister installation, Construction “Documents” (LARGE) proposes to use life size “ghost house” outlines across multiple city blocks so that passersby can both understand the actual physical scale of the destruction, while also being able to look through these installations to the environment just beyond, highlighting what we as a society once valued more than the rights of our own citizens - privatized parking for white people.
Construction “Documents” (small)
Construction “Documents” (LARGE)
project partners
City of Raleigh (client)
Design Workshop (project lead and landscape architect)
Dare Coulter (community engagement)
credits
images ©a gang of three
project text/editing by ©a gang of three
art planning, placemaking and wayfinding by a gang of three (in collaboration with Design Workshop)