Welcome to Under the Hood.
Let’s explore the creative ideas driving the studio
What’s a WALL—simple shelter or means to separate? For our summer dispatch Hood Design Studio’s Michael DeGregorio and Paul Peters reflect on the ways that a WALL might be built to evoke labor + history or unbuilt to restore equitable access.
PHOTOGRAPHY: Adrienne Eberhardt
“Walls are typically static, but at Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing Park the tabby wall can change and transform — the environment will act on it over time.”
Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing Park celebrates the heritage and success of the historic Lavilla neighborhood.
PHOTOGRAPHY: Toni Smailagic of CRE8JAX
WALL TO WALL
MICHAEL DEGREGORIO, Principal + Landscape Architect
I like walls. Obviously, they can be used to divide, but within landscape design they can create a structure and framework for open space. When I talk about walls, I’m talking about large, freestanding walls that are sizable and larger than a human—walls that are big enough to act as a canvas, walls that catch light and shadow, walls that provide shade.
My grandfather was the last of the DeGregorios to be a bricklayer. I come from five generations of Italian bricklayers, so I've been looking at walls with my father since I was a kid. I’m particularly fond of clinker bricks, which are dense, irregular, and very sculptural. The clay is overfired to produce imperfections. Because each module is different, you can see the tactility, craft, and labor that went into laying a wall.
At Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing Park in Jacksonville, Florida, there's a supergraphic wall that surrounds the lifted lawn. Each letter is made out of tabby, a kind of concrete made out of oyster shells and ash that’s prevalent in the southeast. While the wall spells out the words to the celebrated hymnal by James Weldon Johnson and John Rosamond Johnson, the material references the ruins of the slave quarters at nearby Kingsley Plantation.
We went to the plantation early on in the development of the park. On the backside of the property the remaining bright white walls of the slave quarters stand in a semi-circle. They're made of tabby and starting to degrade. At the foot of each wall you can see the oyster shells that have slumped off. When we arrived, the walls were shrouded in fog and blurring with the landscape. That was a really striking image for us and we translated it directly to the park.
PHOTOGRAPHY: Adrienne Eberhardt
“We are often quick to be judgmental about walls, but we can flip the meaning and use them to create historical datums or thresholds.”
The reimagined Damrosch Park creates a more welcoming edge to the campus.
PHOTOGRAPHY: Brooklyn Digital Foundry
AFTER THE GARDEN
PAUL PETERS, Principal + Landscape Architect
The Hortus conclusus, or enclosed garden, describes a walled landscape that keeps the wild and untamed from the cultivated. But that concept has been used to justify exclusion.
When Kevin Roche and landscape architect Dan Kiley designed the Oakland Museum of California in the 1960’s, it was meant as a set of public urban gardens but city officials, citing civil unrest and the activism of the Black Panthers, decided they needed a wall to keep unrest out. Our redesign of the Oakland Museum focused on breaking down that boundary to reconnect the museum with the city.
Similarly, Robert Moses’ urban renewal in New York City bulldozed blocks on the upper West Side and led to Lincoln Center—an elite podium separate from the rest of the city. While there was a metaphorical wall around the campus, there also is a literal wall on the west side. It is about 15 to18-feet tall and forms an infrastructural barrier for access. Our project at Damrosch Park takes down the wall and replaces it with a series of gardens and groves that brings people into the campus from the west and connects to Amsterdam Houses, a NYCHA housing project.
The design aims to remove an invisible social barrier through a series of human-scaled spaces to sit in the shade or read a book. Instead of reinforcing the boundary, we replaced the walls with a threshold.
Hood Design Studio’s latest project, McColl Park + The Nest.
PHOTOGRAPHY: JonnyArchives
News
The New York Times’ Michael Kimmelman notes that HDS’ renovation of Damrosch Park at Lincoln Center could “help heal a civic wound”.
In Untapped Journal, Walter Hood shares the story of the home where he grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina and the lessons of care it taught him.
McColl Park opened last month in the heart of Charlotte, NC. HDS’ design and art installation brings the community together. “It builds a better society when we’re able to understand one another and celebrate one another, even though there’s differences between us,” Hood told the Charlotte Observer.
CBS News featured our new design for a memorial sculpture park honoring Sidney and Irène Dearing, the first Black family to own a home in the city of Piedmont, CA. They were driven out by racist mobs in 1924.