name: owen’s park

in collaboration with: SCRD

services provided: spatial design, strategy.

location: baltimore, md

budget: $300 000

year: 2023

1600 rutland ave, once rutland school, has been an empty lot for the last 20 years. situated in the heavily under resourced neighborhood of east broadway, the city of baltimore was looking revamp the lot into a vibrant outdoor community space for the just over three thousands residents in the area. commissioned by the new broadway east cdc and baltimore city department of planning and working with scrd (studio for collaboration, research & design), we developed a community engagement strategy that would form the basis of our design concept and subsequent grant proposal for the state. 

the first leg of our community engagement process involved discerning the community’s urgent needs and how they could be addressed within this new community space. i delved into the history of baltimore and east broadway to understand how decades of segregation and redlining but also bursting creativity had made it the predominantly multigenerational african-american community it now is. during community engagement meetings we asked residents what they envisioned for the park, injecting questions of what safety looks like to them.

our second leg invited community members to map out their own ideas for what their space could look like. we sent a call out for a community day where residents came by to speak with us about their neighborhood, things they miss that used to happen, and their hopes for the future. synthesizing data points from both legs of the community engagement process, i parsed out three themes of play, rest and gather as a way of organizing the program of the park. 

a working meeting between the design team resulted in the following program: a main entrance, amphitheater, event lawn, play & gathering areas, a kiosk for rotating vendors, planting beds for a community garden and painted murals to calm traffic surrounding the park.