Designing the Parks Conference:
The Present and Future of Park Planning and Design

Tuesday, December 9 – Thursday, December 11, 2008

at Cavallo Point
Golden Gate National Recreation Area
Sausalito, CA

In continuation of Van Alen Institute’s work on “Envisioning Gateway: A Public Design Competition for Gateway National Park,” Designing the Parks is a two-part conference examining the design of landscapes and buildings in national, regional, and state parks today. Over three days at Cavallo Point in Golden Gate National Recreation Area, forward-thinking designers, planners, park and resource managers, scholars, preservationists, conservationists, social scientists, and students will come together to analyze current conditions and present critical issues that must be addressed in public park design in order to maintain their relevancy and sustainability into the 21st century.

While the Envisioning Gateway competition formulated design proposals for a specific site – albeit highly complex because of its historical, urban, and ecological conditions – the ultimate goal of the conference is more expansive in scope: it aims to generate a set of draft planning and design principles that will help guide the National Park Service, and other park managers at the state, regional and local levels, as they face increasingly complex design and management challenges in diverse parks throughout the United States.

The principles will be rooted in the direct experiences of park managers, and will benefit from the exchange between a wide consortium of government agencies, parks advocacy groups, and academic and cultural institutions. In collaboration with the National Park Service and a select group of design educators, Van Alen Institute will test and disseminate the conference’s resulting design principles in the form of studio options at architectural programs across the United States.

The conference is being sponsored by the National Park Service, The Cultural Landscape Foundation, University of Virginia, Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, the Institute at Golden Gate, George Wright Society, National Parks Conservation Association, and Van Alen Institute.

For more information visit the conference website: www.designingtheparks.com.