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| Great Park Master Designer Selected The Orange County Great Park Corporation Board of Directors enthusiastically selected Ken Smith Landscape Architect of New York, a world-renowned landscape design firm, as Master Designer of the Orange County Great Park. Ken Smith and his team will be charged with the overall responsibility of creating the master design for the Orange County Great Park. Their most famous designs include the East Pines Master Plan and the U.S.S. Intrepid Sea, Space and Air Museum, both in New York, and Third Street Light Rail Project in San Francisco. Smith’s design includes a canyon joining the Agua Chinon corridor with a lake with an amphitheatre faces east across the lake and retains the old runway as a linear monument to the Marine history with fighter planes stationed along its entire length. Orange bicycles will be used as a mode of transportation throughout the park and three large hot air balloons will be an attraction for visitors to enjoy a panoramic view of the park from above. Smith’s design also responded to the public’s needs and desires. More than 3, 380 individuals from around the county participated in an online poll and nearly 1, 700 individual comments, of which twenty percent were from Irvine residents, were positive responses to Ken Smith’s proposal. Smith’s design captured the public’s imagination with the Great Canyon, lakes, an amphitheatre, a sports park, museums and a natural grove. Ken Smith Landscape Architect was one of 38 world-renowned design firms invited to compete for the honor of becoming the Master Designer of the Orange County Great Park. A groundbreaking ceremony is slated for Spring, 2006. The 1, 347-acre Orange County Great Park will be a major metropolitan park and the focal point of redevelopment of the larger 4, 700-acre former Marine Corps Air Station El Toro located in Irvine, California and designated for closure more than a decade ago. write your comments about the article :: © 2006 Construction News :: home page |