Projects \ Rise
Located at Goose Island State Park near Rockport, TX, this ADA-accessible observation platform is intended for bird watchers and nature education groups to engage with an otherwise inaccessible piece of coastal marshland. The 8’x12’ platform sits at a height approximately six feet above grade and grants users a better vantage point into a habitat notable for its diverse plant life and an abundant feeding ground for the hundreds of migratory bird species that winter near Aransas Bay. The platform is marked by a 96-foot treated yellow pine screen-wall that acts as a backdrop for perceiving the rich variety of native grasses on site.
The wall’s presence shifts and changes as it is approached obliquely from the north and into the adjacent parking lot. Initially appearing solid from the park entrance, upon moving around it, the slatted wall reveals itself to have two different degrees of transparency. More porous at the bottom, tall grasses and light rays are free to pass in and out of the lower portion of the wall. The more solid portion above establishes the height of the platform’s guardrail and provides a physical and psychological separation from the parking lot in the foreground. The 66-foot ramp is decoupled from the wood slats to allow for a 3-foot wide swath of grasses to grow along the length of the wall. Once ascended, the platform re-engages with the wall and offers security and directionality as viewers look out towards the bay.
Resulting from a collaborative design-build studio, RISE reflects a distillation of 13 individual design concepts into one built product. A wall is a vertical gesture, but our project is essentially horizontal, establishing a dialogue with the distant horizon and a register for the subtle changes in the immediate topography and the grasses that spring from it. Uniquely integrated with the landscape in plan and section, users are implicitly encouraged to view the site in a more tactile and multi-sensory manner. With time the lumber will weather to a silvery-grey and the steel structure will wear a thick coat of red-orange rust, but light and shadow will continue to dance across the platform and pierce the screen wall in unpredictable patterns. Our singular gesture, this line in the land, is intended to elicit a more meaningful relationship with the site and all its users, human and non human. As people pass through the wall's threshold and begin to climb the ramp, they can run their hands through the tall blue stemmed grasses and, perhaps, realize our site is just as beautiful through a magnifying glass as it is through a set of binoculars.
Location Goose Island State Park (Near Rockport, TX)
Class Advanced Design - Fall 2016
Professor Coleman Coker
Partners Eric Alexander, Sara Bensalem, Hannah Frossard, James Holliday, Hannah Ivancie, Josh Leger, Max Mahaffey, Olakunle Oni, Michelle Sifre, Sebastian Sonderegger Rojas, Neive Tierney
Award AIA Fort Worth Student Design Merit Award
Featured Texas Architect Magazine - March/April 2017 \ UTSoA ISSUE: 013