In a bid to create a master plan for Shelby Farms Park in Memphis, Tennessee, a competition asking contributors to develop it into a Central Park of the 21st century was thrown open. The park is supposed to be ‘a new regional center for growth, a new destination for residents, a jewel of civic pride, and an attraction to people from around the world.’ At the end, Field Operations, Hargreaves Associates and Tom Leader Studio were short listed as the finalists.
Captivatingly, the master plan will encompass 4500 acres of land, aiming at higher concentration and multiplicity of uses, such as, land husbandry practices including farming, research, energy, education and markets. The finalists who have been so very instrumental in probing the site-specific traits that make it a favorite destination today: open fields, comprehensive sights, amazing sunsets, rising and falling hills, nestled lakes, applied learning about agriculture and nature, a countryside drive, and bottomland woods.
It’s interesting to notice that all three finalists are pining to turn the park into a kind of social engineering, a tool with which deskbound, fat, uncultured, carbon-producing people are cultivated into vigorous ecologists. The winner is to be declared on April 9, 2008. So, the countdown has already begun.
Source: Pruned
