Embassy Mountain

Embassy Park Design Competition
Waltham, MA
December 2010

2nd Place Winner, Student Category and People's Choice Award Winner

EMBASSY MOUNTAIN is a simple intervention, working with the limitations of the site to foster new and exciting experiences.

The proposed mountain is an interactive object, open to different interpretations. It is deceptively straightforward: quite simply, it is a grassy, earthen mound. Yet, it is not only a park, but a playground, sculpture gallery, stage, even an intimate outdoor theatre—the blank walls of the adjacent buildings could be used as screens for video projections. By working upward, the project not only overcomes the restrictions of the brownfield site, but the marginalized condition of the park that exists there today.

Dotting the mountain are a number of raised planting beds, providing homes for relocated trees, as well as opportunities for public art. But: made of recycled rubber, they can also be benches, another object to climb, or places to eat lunch. At night, they light up; Embassy Mountain becomes an attractive and welcoming beacon for downtown revelers to meet, rest, and tell stories. On the site of the old Embassy Theatre, this is a project about discovering and elaborating personal narratives.