Sugar Loaf: Experience the Mountain, Your Way

Strategies for Achieving Consensus and Having Fun

Jennifer Jones, ASLA, Landscape Architect, Principal, Carol R. Johnson Associates, Inc., USA

Background

Sugar Loaf represents a classic example of an imposing topographic form and important historical, cultural and ecological resource. This design charrette offers an opportunity to examine a highly visible icon of the City through a wide diversity of lenses and to develop a range of implementable ideas to expand access, interpretation and protection of its historical and ecological resources. Sugar Loaf is accessible via cable car, and is visited by over one million visitors per year. There are trails that lead to the top where there are overlooks, restaurants and other visitor services.

Strategies for achieving successful charrette results from a wide diversity of participants include Advance Preparation, Site Visit, Site Analysis and Formulation of Design Ideas. The lessons should be applicable to other important natural and cultural resources; one sees similar heavily visited, poetical and highly symbolic land forms in other parts of the world, such as Machu Picchu, Peru and Guilin, China. The challenge is to understand how to meet multiple objectives -- to enhance access and understanding for the visitor, and to protect the resource.

Advance Preparation

Prior to the Conference, briefing materials would be provided to the participants to establish a shared base of understanding of Sugar Loaf (e.g., history, topography, ecology, visitors services, maintenance problems, safety concerns, teaching programs). At the Conference Hotel or at the site, the participants would briefly share their backgrounds and interest in the project. A local host partner - such as the Mayor or the park superintendent or representative of a local advocacy group - would address the group to articulate their goals and issues they hope the charrette will address.

Site Visit

Participants would either self-select, or be assigned to, field exploration teams of 2-3 persons to explore one or more facets of Sugar Loaf. Each team would be charged with gathering information about a specific facet of the hill (e.g. visitors' services, ecology, trail conditions, overlooks, interpretive materials). Or each team could be asked to examine the visitor experience through a particular type of visitor ability - perhaps elderly visitors, children, a person who is blind or mobility impaired. Field packets, including questions to explore, would be given to each team. Ideally, each team would be accompanied by a local partner familiar with the hill who could assist with orientation and translating. The teams would visit Sugar Loaf to record their observations, including using digital cameras to document existing conditions. The tasks for each field team can be focussed to address issues that have been identified in advance with the assistance of the local partners.

Site Analysis

Each field team would report back findings to the whole group. The first session would be devoted to recording participants' observations. Design issues as well as opportunities and constraints would be identified, recorded and organized. This information would be formulated into an outline, and documented with identifying photographs. A large plan map of the hill, spread on the floor, could be used to prepare a "Site Analysis Plan." A very large-scaled topographic plan of the mountain, prepared in advance could be placed on the floor. People could walk on or sit on the plan to record information. Digital images of individual comments and findings from the plan could be used to illustrate observations in the report.

Formulation of Design Ideas

The participants will then be assigned to 2-3 design teams to explore potential design ideas for selected design issues. Each team would include a diversity of participants, including 1-2 design professionals and, hopefully, local participants. Depending upon the time and skills available within the group, these ideas can be developed into illustrative sketches. The charrette Facilitator would help to organize the teams, give logistical and professional support and prepare the digital PowerPoint presentation to the Conference.

Jennifer Jones, ASLA

Professional Experience

Jennifer Jones, is a Landscape Architect and Principal of Carol R. Johnson Associates, a 60-member landscape architectural firm in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. Ms. Jones has almost 25 years of experience, in the USA and in other countries, in master planning and site design for parks, colleges and universities, senior housing, homeless shelters, hospitals, embassies, zoos and other projects for public, institutional and corporate clients. She has traveled widely and has lectured at several Universities and the International Federation of Landscape Architects.

She has participated in multi-disciplinary, on-site, pre-construction surveys and master plan design charrettes in Conakry, Guinea; Yaounde, Cameroon; Jakarta, Indonesia; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; London, England; and Athens Greece for parks and expanded or new US Embassy compounds. Many of these projects have included meeting with local professionals and planning officials to confirm the local construction environment and identify resources and regulations affecting the projects. Goals of these projects have included improving site accessibility, environmental conditions, pedestrian and vehicular circulation, site identity and security; maintenance access, open spaces and planting.

As subconsultants to the project architects, Ms. Jones currently heads up the site design team for a new office annex building on an expanded US Embassy compound in Athens, Greece. Universal access is provided throughout the grounds which drop 6.0 meters with an average pitch of 6%. A separate entry accommodates visitors and bridges over the site to enter the building at street grade. Terraces and slopes will be planted with tall cypress trees, as well as an olive grove with underlying beds of lavender. Previously, she designed the transformation of a one-block long abutting street into a pedestrian park. The former through street has a wide walkway paved with unit pavers, large, deciduous shade trees, shrubs and groundcovers. Seat walls provide gathering spaces in the cool outdoor air. The new park provides controlled access, for service and emergency vehicles only, through the use of permanent and retractable decorative bollards. The design also improves the ecology of the street, doubling green space to provide shade and reduce stormwater run-off.

Ms. Jones is also currently providing landscape consulting services to the project architects for the U.S. Chancery Rehabilitation Study for the U.S. Embassy in London, England. Designed by Eero Saarinen in the 1950's, the Chancery building on Grosvenor Square requires rehabilitation to meet current security standards and accessibility codes. Suggested site improvements being designed and permitted include new perimeter fence, planters, a relocated sculpture of General Eisenhower (whose WW II headquarters were in an adjacent building) and barrier-free sidewalks to three public entrances.

For the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, she oversaw preparation of site master plan alternatives. The site contains the Embassy Chancery building, several office buildings, and multiple small structures around the site perimeter. Located on a major historic park in an important civic zone of the city, the site is predominantly paved, with little shade or green space and weak pedestrian connections between buildings. Ms. Jones participated in week-long charrettes on site, to develop site master plans that will improve pedestrian safety, vehicular circulation and parking, open space and plantings.

Consulting to the project architects, Ms. Jones directed the preparation of site master plan alternatives for a newly expanded 5.7-acre U.S. Embassy compound in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The original 3-acre site contains the Embassy Chancery building, a US Marine guard quarters, and recreational facilities. For this project, Ms. Jones also participated in week-long design charrettes on site, with the design team and U.S. State Department personnel. The design team reviewed its recommendations with the State Department in Washington DC and prepared a final report documenting the process, recommendations and phased project cost estimates. Ms. Jones is currently leading the CRJA team in preparing an Engineering Feasibility Study and Construction Environment Profile for the project.

Also of note, Ms. Jones provided schematic site design services to the project architects for a new United States Embassy in Kampala, Uganda. The site elements include a perimeter anti-ram wall around the entire site, sallyports with Delta barriers at each of two vehicular entries, screen fencing and plantings at the staff parking areas, and a formal, ceremonial arrival plaza at the embassy entrance. Pedestrian circulation of consular visitors is separated from staff circulation. The site plans accommodate future expansion of the U.S Marine Guard quarters, tennis courts and a pool for staff recreation, as well as expansion of the office spaces.

As a frequent lecturer and conference participant, she has traveled world-wide and has made presentations to the International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA, Bangkok World Congress), the Society for College and University Planning (SCUP), and the National Preservation Institute on Accessibility in Historic Landscapes. She has also been a guest lecturer/jury member at several schools of landscape architecture, including Khon Kaen University in Thailand, North Carolina State, Harvard Graduate School of Design, Wentworth Institute and the University of Massachusetts. She has also lectured on landscape architecture in China, on the large-scale use of wildflowers, on roofdeck garden design, and other related topics.

Education

Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, Masters in Landscape Architecture, 1979

University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, Bachelor of Science in Environmental Design, 1976 (Magna cum laude)

Professional Registration

Registered Landscape Architect in:

CLARB #512
Connecticut #698
Illinois #157-000381
Indiana #900017
Maryland #1004
Massachusetts #756
New York #1341
North Carolina #0787
Tennessee #452
Virginia #406

Professional Affiliations and Memberships

American Society of Landscape Architects
Boston Society of Landscape Architects, Past President
Boston Society of Architects, Affiliate Member
New England Women in Real Estate
Former Member, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Historical Commission
Society for College and University Planning

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