Van Buren Park

Phoenix, Arizona, USA

In collaboration with Miljan Glogovac, Chris Nieto, and the Phoenix Community Alliance

Van Buren Park came out of a question of what the future of downtown Phoenix would be. The urban plan concentrates on a large focus area chosen by the Phoenix Community Alliance; widely made-up by vacant land, large parking lots, and several abandoned buildings. The project began with a deep analysis of the existing environment, including several walks through the neighborhood, to determine the state of the area, its key elements, and the needs of a future community in the area.

The design of the master plan focuses in creating a walkable mix-use community, which easily incorporates multimodal transportation and creates connections with the greater downtown. In order to achieve these connections, the plan focuses on creating an infrastructural frame work from which the public and private sector can begin to develop around. The infrastructure is composed primarily by a large chiller plant, which provides all of the HVAC needs for the entire neighborhood. The proposal also includes several parking garages and a series of pedestrian corridors that would be built to not only make the area more walkable, but to provide services an easement in order for services to easily link through the neighborhood. And finally, a creation of parks and open spaces to encourage denser living.

The rendered buildings, were not designed to create an aesthetic guideline for the neighborhood, but rather show the feel of space that is desired. By ridding developers from having to include costly HVAC and parking into their proposals, the neighborhood in turn asks for developments to include landscaped open space, usable roof spaces (or photovoltaic panels), as well as high quality design.