Surface Design for Museum Way Mall

Palo Alto, CA As a part of Construction Technology instruction, we were tasked with the surface design and structural consideration for Museum Way Mall, an outdoor space with underground parking. The mall links Cantor Art Center and Bing Concert Hall at each end, and additional outdoor art installations on either side, including a piece by Andy Goldsworthy. In total, this area makes up a world-class arts district on the Stanford Campus. Challenges included linking stylistic differences between the classical Cantor Art Center and the organic, post-modern Bing Concert Hall and structural span considerations for the subterranean parking structure. My approach was to design on a formal grid, layering with dynamic rectangular shapes as seen in Modern Art–a concept I called “landscape as art”. This grid would unify the paving scales of both buildings and determine the structural span of the subterranean parking garage. The resulting module, 60' x 18', could be broken down into 6', 18', 30' and 60' increments making up a flexible grid system to accommodate paving, way finding, grids of shade trees, large areas for flexible programing (e.g. farmers markets) and a sequence of glistening pools that guide concert goers through the mall at night.