Peace Park, Phase 1 by Arbolope Studio

Located in an economically depressed area of North St. Louis, Peace Park is a new coalition-built public park in the College Hill neighborhood, the only St. Louis City neighborhood that previously lacked any parks. The park is sited on a collection of consolidated commercial and residential lots at the corner of a major roundabout which hosts one of the city’s most recognized landmarks at its center: the Grand Avenue Water Tower – the oldest water tower in the city and the largest free-standing Corinthian column in the world. While once densely populated, this corner lay vacant for years before being temporarily stewarded by a neighbor into an informal community donation center and garden. As the neighborhood continued to decline, so too did the site.

Spurred by a 2018 report documenting social determinants of health disparities in the region, a broad coalition of community stakeholders was formed to lean into past efforts and to transform the site into a lasting community asset. The Landscape Architect joined the coalition shortly thereafter and was tasked with translating the site’s assets into a site specific design. Foundational design goals included:

• Create an inclusive and welcoming College Hill community anchor
• Develop a design that anticipates future growth and connections
• Create a high impact but low maintenance landscape with realistic implementation
• Leverage project partnerships and community resources

Utilizing extensive community feedback, the design team wove together the community’s desired program features into a phased masterplan that was formally and conceptually inspired by “Peace Circles”. Phase 1, completed in 2024, consists of programmatic “circles” connected by sinuous, tree-lined ADA accessible walkways and stormwater bioswales.

Program “circle”s include: the Gateway Pavilion entrance plaza; a new diversified orchard with regionally appropriate fruiting trees and shrubs; an outdoor exercise circuit; a centralized gathering space oriented around a (future) interactive basketball “tree”; a sidewalk plaza ready for pop-up markets and more; terraced perimeter seating walls taking advantage of the original site topography; and an amphitheater. The project also utilized low-carbon footprint materials including locally sourced limestone fines pathways; woven bamboo for the pavilion; locally-made site furniture; and gabion basket site-walls filled with salvaged bricks from the demolition of neighboring condemned buildings.

Additionally, large areas of native and prairie-inspired planting beds buffer sidewalks and park spaces from the surrounding street noise and pollution; form borders and backdrops for distinct program spaces; slow, direct, filter, and absorb stormwater run-off; provide pollinator, wildlife, and forage habitat; and create a seasonally-dynamic yet serene landscape. Thousands of donated plants, including the park’s diverse collection of trees, were planted in waves throughout 2024 by dedicated volunteers from the community, the design team, and the broader coalition. The Second & Third Phases of the park will complete the transformation of the full block in the near future.

The Gateway Pavillion
The Gateway Pavilion was designed and built in the spring 2023 semester by Wash U students as part of an OSEP supported seminar class led by an Architecture Professor and Registered Architect from the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts. The students were given a mandate to create an iconic entrance to the Park which could serve as a protective shelter, a bus stop, and a comfortable meeting point for residents of College Hill.

Influenced by the winding paths around circular programmatic nodes and soft beds of native grasses and edible shrubs, the students worked with the Landscape Architecture team and broader coalition to blend seamlessly into the curvature of the site design. The final tree-like, dome form of the Pavilion, constructed by students through workshops with over fifty volunteers from the St Louis area, was ultimately made of a weave of bamboo strips, allowing for a mesh-like architectural form to stretch across the plaza. Completed, the Pavillion frames key views and creates a safe and inviting portal into the park; dialogues with the monumentality and ornamentation of the adjacent historic water tower; and references the iconic St. Louis Gateway Arch, visible in the distance.

Peace Park & the Gateway Pavillion
Multi-programmatic & sustainable by design, both the Park and Pavillion work together to create a unified transformation of a vacant corner into a vibrant, community-owned green space.

Peace Park is truly a coalition-built landscape. The project is a testament to the power of interdisciplinary collaboration between architecture and landscape architecture, and it demonstrates how leveraging project partnerships and community resources can help create transformative spaces for the public good.

• Other landscape architecture offices involved in the design of the landscape:
Arbolope Studio (St. Louis, MO, USA)

• Architecture offices involved in the design:
Assistant Professor Wyly Brown, AIA (Founding Principal, Leupold Brown Goldbach Architekten) & Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts (Washington University in St. Louis) Students

• Other credits:
Additional Design Team
• Civil Engineering: Menke Consulting
• Electrical Engineering: Introba Inc.

Additional Collaborators
• Office of Socially Engaged Practice, Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts (Washington University In St. Louis)
• CityStudio Fellows from Years 2021-2024, Office of Socially Engaged Practice, Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts (Washington University In St. Louis)
• The Green City Coalition
– Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC)
– City of St. Louis
– St. Louis Development Corporation (SLDC)
– Metropolitan Sewer District
• The Nature Conservancy
• Peace Park Community Advisory Board (College Hill Residents)
• Counterpublic (Public Art Triennial)
• McCarthy Construction (General Contractor)
• The Metropolitan Urban League
• Health Equity Works
• McKelvey School of Engineering (Washington University in St. Louis)
• A&S, Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences (Washington University in St. Louis)
• Tyson Living Research Center (Washington University in St. Louis)
• University of Health Sciences and Pharmacy in St. Louis
• Environmental Justice Green Steward
• Equitable Development Greet Steward
• College Hill Foundation
• STL Forestry Division
• Affinia Healthcare
• Jubilee Community Church
• The Vacancy Collaborative
• Ameren Missouri
• Legal Services of Eastern Missouri
• PHL, inc.