Opportunities Found for Redesign of Philadelphia's Famed JFK Plaza/LOVE Park

As Ashley Hahn wrote on the PlanPhilly early this week, with the sale of the parking garage under the JFK Plaza/LOVE Park has led to a redesign opportunity of the park above it. With infrastructure limitations at hand, the competitive RFP process led way to Hargreaves Associates, a firm with experience designing given complex constraints.

While the stipulations of the RFP mandate that the new version of the park, "must keep the LOVE sculpture in place, a significant water feature, strong horticultural connections to the Parkway, and diagonal pathways," everything else can be totally redone. Hahn writes how the "LOVE Park may be tired, its granite slabs loose and clanky, but it works remarkably well as a truly public space. On any given day people play chess, snap photos, eat lunch, jaw with friends, soapbox, dance, read the paper, and just linger. Its diversity of casual use is a beautiful, rare thing."

The RFP describes many physical objectives for the park's redesign, including implementation of "sustainable systems, smart stormwater management, and durable high-performance building materials. But the design team must also answer to equally important yet hard to quantify values in order to sustain what’s already good about LOVE Park: its mid-century modern pedigree, and its support of free expression and diversity."