Chicago, USA
Lucas Museum of Narrative Art Landscape
Designer: SCAPE Landscape Arquitecture
Position: Designer
Client: Lucas Holdings
Lucas Museum of Narrative Art Landscape
Location: Chicago, IL
Year: 2015
Collaborator: Studio Gang Architects, MAD Architects, VOA Associates Incorporated, Applied Ecological Services TERRA Engineering, Ltd
SCAPE partnered with Studio Gang Architects and Applied Ecological Services to design an immersive and performative landscape for the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art along the Chicago Lakefront. The landscape design integrates the museum into the Lake Michigan waterfront and draws from the region’s distinct coastal dune topography. A series of distinctive planting zones take cues from the Lake Michigan shoreline in the woodland, prairie, dune field and wetland.
An evergreen-dominant woodland with dense shrub and groundcover planting buffers Lake Shore Drive and provide slope stabilization on the site’s edges. The Event Prairie is a grass mosaic dotted with canopy trees creating space for gathering and shade on sunny days. The EcoPark consists of a series of cascading ponds that reference the naturally-occurring dunes of the region. The ponds collect precipitation from the site and use highly textured perennial wetland grasses, ferns and flowers to provide wide-ranging habitat.
