client: metro parks tacoma
landscape architect: siteworkshop
project size: 11 acre park
construction cost: $60,000,000
project responsibilities: design, project and fabrication management
facility signage: wayfinding & interpretive signs
awards: Grapis 2022 Design Annual Silver Award, 2019 ASLA Washington Chapter Award of Honor, 2019 GRAY Awards Landscape Category Winner, 2020 APWA Project of the Year
while at michael courtney design

DUNE PENINSULA at Point Defiance is a 11-acre park built over a Superfund site. The setting along Puget Sound and the new landscape obscure what was once a slag waste depository for an adjacent copper processing plant. Metro Parks Tacoma and Site Workshop invited our team to create site identification, wayfinding and interpretive graphics for this new park. During initial meetings, the clients talked about layers. Layers of slag, now covered by containment and new soil. Layers of community: the steady work at the plant provided employment to build families, homes, and lives. Layers of the future, life of the park. Our design team integrated the “Layers” and industrial history of the site: the folded aluminum pieces on each sign visually represent the layers, the sign bases are corten steel with the intent they will create new layers on the site, and the aluminum structure is exposed, not hidden or painted. As a part of our process, on a cold blustery day, we went out with the client and landscape architect to locate and verify sizing of the final signs with full size mock-ups prior to fabrication.