Swampoodle Park: Adrienne McCray, ASLA, a landscape architect at Lee and Associates spoke about the challenge of meeting the needs of the different groups who shaped Swampoodle Park, which is named after a vanished 19th century neighborhood in Northeast D.C. Community outreach is an important aspect of the mission of the NoMa Parks Foundation, which financed the projectis high on the list. READ MORE
Metropolitan Washington’s persistent urban challenges are frequently in the news. The concerns include ensuring public safety; providing quality public education; increasing the availability of affordable housing; promoting accessibility and quality of transportation; enhancing infrastructure reliability and durability; and caretaking of public parks and open space. Sustaining fiscal and economic health — especially jobs — also is high on the list.
Another urban challenge that tends to be overlooked is the need for beautification of visually unappealing and unsafe public places.
Examples of such places in the District are the dark, poorly lighted, ominous railway underpasses along K, L and M streets NE, and Florida Avenue NE, in the NoMa (North of Massachusetts Avenue) neighborhood. READ MORE
On Tuesday, a new visual experience opens in NoMa’s L Street NE underpass, one of several passageways beneath elevated rail tracks that run through the neighborhood. “Lightweave,” a responsive lighting display designed by San Francisco-based design studio Futureforms, is the NoMa Parks Foundation’s latest installation in the neighborhood and part of a $50 million grant. The display consists of six formations of cloud-like, lattice LED tubes suspended below the ceiling of the underpass between First and Second streets NE. With three formations on either side of the underpass, the tubes react to ambient noise, such as trains passing on the tracks above or cars driving along L Street NE. Read more.
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Six suspended lattices of steel and polycarbonate LED tubing will glow 24 hours a day, shifting colors in response to nearby ambient sounds.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — On the evening of Tuesday, April 9, the NoMa Parks Foundation will turn on the power for Lightweave, a dynamic and compelling light installation in the L Street NE railway underpass. Comprising six spiraling lattices of stainless steel and bent LED tubing suspended above the underpass sidewalks — three above each passageway, hung from freestanding armatures — the artwork will light up the space 24 hours a day, with LED colors changing and moving in response to sound waves from the sidewalk spaces and vibrations from trains passing overhead. Lightweave is the second of the NoMa Parks Foundation’s planned underpass “art parks” to open and was designed by interdisciplinary San Francisco art and design firm FUTUREFORMS. The first art park — Rain, in the M Street NE underpass — opened in October 2018. (more…)
NoMa is preparing to break ground on the new Tanner Park in January, potentially bringing the first large green space to the near northeast neighborhood by next fall. The NoMa Business Improvement District and its contractor Forrester Construction have nearly all the necessary permits in hand to begin work on the 2.5-acre space next to the Metropolitan Branch Trail north of New York Avenue, representatives said at an Eckington Civic Association meeting Monday. Construction is expected to take 10-12 months. Read more.
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