Parks We Love: Seattle's Olympic Sculpture Park

Olympic Sculpture park (M.O. Stevens / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)

Seattle, Washington is a city that, like Boston, maintains a long-term commitment to improving climate policies and creating more open, green spaces. With ambitious goals like becoming carbon neutral by 2050 and reducing transportation emissions by 82%, Seattle remains a front-runner in U.S. cities devoted to improving the environment. Along with these goals, the city has also turned its attention to the maintenance and progress of its parks. Restoring thousands of acres of forested parklands, increasing the number of Seattle households within a 10-minute walk to a park, and connecting people to nature through park programs are all pledges geared toward ensuring a thriving parks system.

One of these systems can be found along the Seattle waterfront, the central portion of which is in the middle of a $728 million, multi-year revitalization and redesign effort. Within the multitude of parks that currently make the waterfront accessible to its citizens, the Olympic Sculpture Park is a unique combination of art and environment.

A former industrial site, the nine-acre Olympic park is now downtown Seattle’s largest green space. The park evolved from a partnership between the Seattle Art Museum and the Trust for Public Land with the goal of reclaiming the city’s last undeveloped waterfront property. Opening in 2007, the park was meant to return the industrial site to a healthy ecosystem while creating a space for outdoor sculpture.

Restoration of the park faced environmental challenges. Before its transformation, the land was used as a fuel-storage and transfer facility which led to contaminated groundwater and soil.

After acquiring the site in 1999, the Seattle Art Museum held a design competition, with the architect team Weiss/Manfredi’s design selected. Their Z-shaped design creates shifting views in the park with the port on one side and the skyline and Olympic mountains on another. Along with shifting viewpoints, the design creates a continuous constructed landscape for art with a 40-foot change in elevation from the city to the water, creating an emphasis on views of the skyline and Elliot Bay. As a result of their design, Weiss/Manfredi created a park that can “rise over existing infrastructure to reconnect the urban core to the revitalized waterfront.”

With environmental protection in mind, the design also allowed a wide range of environmental restoration projects, including brownfield redevelopment, the creation of a Chinook salmon habitat and pocket beach, incorporating native plantings, capturing and using on-site rainwater, and utilizing sustainable design strategies.

Visitors are able to wander the 2,200 foot Z-shaped path that moves from the park’s pavilion to the water to the surrounding sculptures. Free to the public and open year-round, the park creates unlimited access to the views of the Pacific Northwest and impressive sculpture displays.

“We aspired to create a sculpture park at the intersection of the city and the water, and to define a new model for bringing art to the public,” said architects Weiss/Manfredi.

The sculpture collection features major works from artists over the past half-century, as well as temporary art installations during the summer months.  

With a dedication to art and the environment, the Olympic Sculpture Park has sparked equal access and innovative designs to further the city of Seattle’s environmental goals, all while creating an enjoyable and inspiring park for all visitors to enjoy.  

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Editor’s note: During the COVID-19 pandemic, the museum has closed the Sculpture Park’s pavilion. Though the park remains open, the museum is asking visitors to adhere to social distancing guidelines. At the time of publication, current CDC guidance recommended wearing a cloth face covering when out for essential trips, and keeping 6+ feet of physical space between yourself and others

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About this series: The Trustees’ One Waterfront initiative is a bold, new vision for establishing a resilient urban waterfront. Yes, the vision is big, and new for Boston, but we have the benefit of following in the footsteps of those who have paved the way. Many waterfront parks designed for climate resilience have emerged over the past few decades all along the world’s coastlines and are models to emulate and learn from. The lessons learned from these pioneering open spaces—in science, design, and beyond—have and will continue to provide The Trustees and our partners with an expansive knowledge base for planning practices as we progress toward our vision for iconic, public open spaces on the Boston Waterfront.  Click here to see past posts in our ‘Parks We Love’ series.