Dickerman Park St Paul, Minnesota
Dickerman Park is a collaboration between Coen + Partners and artist Wing Young Huie, for the design of a forgotten public space along University Avenue connecting Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota. Donated to St. Paul in 1910, the Park was intended to be the beginning of a grand boulevard that was never realized. The park has never functioned as a viable public space and is used today as a parking lot, service area, and front yard for private businesses fronting the avenue.
The redesign of this public space looks to the rapidly changing identity of the surrounding neighborhood, as well as to the 100-year old oak trees dotting the site. Emphasizing temporal qualities and the neighborhood’s diverse population, the park will employ photography, in different forms, as night lighting, and an evolving record of the history and culture along University Avenue. In response to the transportation corridor, the park takes on a linear form. This challenging configuration was an opportunity to layer the colorful and vibrant elements in the design to create depth of light and texture that engages the pedestrian while buffering them from the busy university traffic.
A successional planting of oak trees every few years mimics the changing nature of the avenue while ensuring that the park always has an iconic stand of multi-generational oaks.
- Select Publications: Minneapolis Star Tribune, Architecture Minnesota
- Select Awards: 2007 ASLA Award (Minnesota Chapter)
- Collaboration: City of St. Paul, Brian McMahon/University United, Wing Young Huie
