Just outside of Downtown Lakeland, on the eastern edge of Lake Bonnet, the City of Lakeland is preparing to embark on the construction of a new 180 acre urban park.  The park is one of the most significant urban interventions taking place in the Central Florida region and will have a measurable impact on its surrounding community.  It will provide new places for people to gather and spend time, including walking trails, restaurants, a concert venue, and other cultural attractions.

In this studio, we will be designing whimsical extensions or additions for existing park surfaces that will delight and engage visitors while also helping to maintain the health of the park's ecosystem.  These surfaces may be elements such as building facades, park benches, walking paths, patios, underpasses, or retaining walls.  The objects you create may do things like filter water, act as bird feeders, purify soil, manage storm-water runoff, or provide protection for wetlands (among many other functions), but they will also be visually interesting elements that contribute to the beauty of the park.

Bonnet Springs Park is being designed by Sasaki, an award-winning landscape and planning firm based in Boston, who will be advising us throughout this studio.  Students will design and build models of their surface extenstions that can be installed and tested on the All Saints campus.