The variegated surface extends into the steel marsh,
which collects and cleans stormwater from the site. ©Stoss Landscape
Urbanism
Erie Street Plaza is a small urban plaza in the Historic Third Ward district
of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The 13,000-square-foot plaza lies at the point where
the Milwaukee River meets the Federal Channel as it empties into Lake Michigan.
It is the final link in a series of public space activators along the Milwaukee
Riverwalk, a three-mile pedestrian and bicycle corridor that connects downtown
Milwaukee to the emerging and redeveloping Third Ward, Beerline Districts, and
the lakefront beyond. At the beginning of the project’s design, the future of
Erie Street Plaza – its users, its function, its programming, even its necessity
– were undecided. The urban context was generally one of infrastructure and
industry; the site lacked neighbors and potential users. The site itself was a
surface parking lot, subject to harsh environmental conditions, including high
winds off the lake. Who is it for? How will it be used? This uncertainty, this
open-endedness, was at the core of its design.
View from Erie Street towards the river. ©Stoss
Landscape Urbanism
FLEXIBLE FIELD: PROGRAMMING
With no set program and no immediate
stakeholders, flexibility was key. The plaza was conceived as a civic plain –
simply articulated and open-ended – that would foster social and environmental
activity and appropriation. The site’s variegated surface accommodates a wide
range of potential uses and activities: art festivals, gatherings, concerts,
movies, weddings, festivals, farmers’ markets, and winter carnivals, as well as
less intense, every-day activities like boat-watching, fishing, sunbathing, and
simply hanging-out.
Given the uncertainty of the site’s future context at
the time of design, programmatic flexibility was a key consideration. ©Stoss
Landscape Urbanism
VARIGEATED SURFACE, TOPOGRAPHIC STRATEGIES, and HYBRID ECOLOGIES: DESIGN
STRATEGY + ELEMENTS
The plaza is an understated assemblage of simple parts,
both familiar and exotic, that pulse with the life of the Third Ward, the
Riverwalk, and this unique confluence of ecological systems. The plaza is
wrapped by local infrastructural and geographical frames – wooden boardwalk from
the downtown Riverwalk and steel bulkhead from the Lake. Rather than following
the water’s edge, the Riverwalk traces the site’s inland perimeter, reinforcing
the plaza’s connection to the river, and its accommodation of ephemeral
inundations.
Site plan. ©Stoss Landscape Urbanism
The project grows from three hybrid ecologies that step down across the site
towards the water: radiant grove, flexible field, and steel marsh. The radiant
grove occupies the upper end of the vegetal gradient, at the plaza’s urban edge.
The poplar grove is positioned to shelter the rest of the plaza from cold winter
winds yet are deliberately transparent to allow for views and safety. The grove
maintains a dense straight line parallel to street edge but opens up toward the
river.
Contrasts in material texture are important: the light
bark of young poplars, the synthetic glow of fiberglass, the weathered steel of
aged infrastructures. ©Stoss Landscape Urbanism
View from the upland terrace across the plaza to the
lower wetland and the river beyond. ©Stoss Landscape Urbanism
Detail of the steel marsh and plaza edge. ©Stoss
Landscape Urbanism
The primary element – the flexible field – is a hybridized plaza-green, with
pavers and lawn surfaces that allow for both intense activity and more passive
use. The plaza is articulated as an eroded field of custom pre-cast pavers
distributed to maximize variability and flexibility. The plaza’s indeterminacy
is accentuated by the erratic scattering of seatwalls and luminous fiberglass
benches, which capture and reflect ambient light and project light from within.
Their irregular placement allows for multiple and diverse social groupings or
solitary retreats, in shade or full sun, protected or exposed. The luminous
qualities of the fiberglass are accentuated as night falls, projecting light
from within and reflecting the passing headlights of automobiles. The glowing
benches have become a signature element of the project.
The project plays on light and weather, establishing a
new civic presence embedded within its context of infrastructure and water.
©Stoss Landscape Urbanism
The variegated surface extends into the steel marsh, which occupies the lower
end of the plaza gradient at the river’s edge. Capturing and cleaning site
stormwater, the steel marsh is key to the site’s stormwater management strategy.
Lowering the grade behind the bulkhead wall allowed for the collection of site
stormwater in a perched position above the river, newly protected from
industrial activities and barge wakes. Native marsh grasses of the type
displaced by the site’s infrastructure and industry thrive in this sheltered
location.
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