Buster Simpson© 2018 WATERMARKS // MARCAS DE AGUA
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WATERMARKS // MARCAS DE AGUA Broadway Cultural Corridor Art Master Plan San Antonio, Texas BUSTER SIMPSON in collaboration with BWC DESIGN October 2018 PREPARED FOR PUBLIC ART SAN ANTONIO 901 Yakima Ave South • Seattle, WA 98144 WATERMARKS // MARCAS DE AGUA Buster Simpson 206.328.6212 Studio • 206.753.7717 Mobile BENDER WELLS CLARK DESIGN BROADWAY CULTURAL CORRIDOR SAN ANTONIO, TX 2018-10-03 1 © 2018 [email protected] • www.bustersimpson.net 830 North Alamo Street • San Antonio, Texas 78215 • (210) 692-9221 ART MASTER PLAN WATERMARKS // MARCAS DE AGUA Forward Broadway Cultural Corridor Art Master Plan The Broadway Cultural Corridor Art Master Plan (the Arts Plan) was made San Antonio, Texas possible by arts funding from the City of San Antonio’s Department for BUSTER SIMPSON in collaboration with BWC DESIGN Cultural and Creative Development 2012 Bond program. This investment October 2018 in arts and cultural enrichment has been guided by Public Art San Antonio staff, the City’s Art Commission, representatives of stakeholder institutions PREPARED FOR PUBLIC ART SAN ANTONIO and other public input. The Arts Plan team of Buster Simpson, a seasoned public artist with national and international experience, and Bender Wells Clark Design, an established San Antonio-based urban design and landscape architectural firm, is highly qualified with many years of experience in planning, designing and implementing public art plans and public art installations. The team has direct knowledge and experience throughout the region, the City and within this specific corridor. The master planning process included analysis of the history, geography, infrastructure, context and natural factors of the region. Previous efforts developed for the Broadway Corridor were reviewed including: plans, studies, design competitions, and proposals. Time was spent on the street observing and recording conditions along Broadway and in the surrounding areas, leading to the concepts, guidelines and principles found in this plan. The Broadway Cultural Corridor Art Master Plan has benefited from a recent planning effort by Centro San Antonio and MIG, a Berkley-based design and planning firm. It is a well-conceived document developed from considerable stakeholder input for physical improvements to the Broadway Right-of-Way. In 2017, voters passed a 42 million dollar bond that provides for Broadway Street planning and improvements including construction of enhancements to infrastructure from Downtown to Mulberry Street, and some as far as Hildebrand Avenue. The Centro Antonio/MIG plan has become the basis for future roadway and streetscape improvements for the public realm in the area. It has influenced this Arts Plan and in return we hope the Arts Plan will influence future streetscape enhancements and public art. Utilization of the public art framework proposed in this Arts Plan should be a goal of any future development of the Broadway Corridor. Broadway corridor showing three phases of street redesign. 901 Yakima Ave South • Seattle, WA 98144 WATERMARKS // MARCAS DE AGUA Buster Simpson 206.328.6212 Studio • 206.753.7717 Mobile BENDER WELLS CLARK DESIGN BROADWAY CULTURAL CORRIDOR SAN ANTONIO, TX 2018-10-03 2 © 2018 [email protected] • www.bustersimpson.net 830 North Alamo Street • San Antonio, Texas 78215 • (210) 692-9221 ART MASTER PLAN Executive Summary The Broadway Cultural Corridor Art Master Plan is a framework with a long-range vision. San Antonio River Water, in all of its manifestations, is a connecting element, becoming a physical and Headwater Springs conceptual strata that brings meaning and broad opportunities for interpretation and integration to the Broadway Cultural Corridor. Water is intended as metaphor, revealing the flows of culture and nature along the Corridor. The Arts Plan draws from history and from the contemporary, civic and cultural aspirations of San Antonio. It serves as a conceptual armature, providing form and guidance while embracing traditional and present-day cultural expressions. It supports individual artists along River Street with creative communities and sustainable economies. (now Broadway Street) Elements of the Arts Plan are to become manifest over time through commissions, performances, installations, analogue and digital media, streetscape engagements, and as Acequia Madre de Valero artist-generated events. It is intended to catalyze collaborative endeavors between individuals, cultural institutions, community groups and businesses. The Arts Plan presents a physical and conceptual framework, based on the themes of water and culture, called Watermarks or Marcas de Agua. With a series of iconic sculptures located strategically along the Broadway Cultural Corridor, aesthetic and conceptual continuity is created. The Arts Plan introduces: • Watermarks // Marcas de Agua - background, creation, evolution, sizes, potential uses; • an inaugural process for engaging artists and creating prototypes; and • a guide for the development of future programmatic elements that build upon the theme and relationship building aspects of Watermarks. Also included in the Arts Plan are: a conceptual distribution overview; placement suggestions; example approaches for specific locations; and potential color, material and planting palettes. Three map overlays show the project area at different times along the Broadway Street Corridor. The 1908 map by City engineers indicates the relationship of River Avenue, now Broadway Street, to both the San Antonio River and the Acequia Madre de Valero. The most recent layer, the I-35 and I-37 interchange, creates a passage or threshold between the downtown core and the Cultural Corridor. 2017 construction site at the San Pedro Creek Improvement Project located at the Flood Tunnel inlet and linear park. Photo reveals the extensive concrete infrastructure, a referencing form for Watermarks. 901 Yakima Ave South • Seattle, WA 98144 WATERMARKS // MARCAS DE AGUA Buster Simpson 206.328.6212 Studio • 206.753.7717 Mobile BENDER WELLS CLARK DESIGN BROADWAY CULTURAL CORRIDOR SAN ANTONIO, TX 2018-10-03 3 © 2018 [email protected] • www.bustersimpson.net 830 North Alamo Street • San Antonio, Texas 78215 • (210) 692-9221 ART MASTER PLAN WATERMARKS // MARCAS DE AGUA THE FORM Markers of story and journey, culture and water A base form for Watermark sculptures has been developed by the Arts Plan team in reference to the shape of engineered water utility pipes that are BACKGROUND: BROADWAY CULTURAL CORRIDOR, often used to divert underground water flow. The form is a precast concrete FORMED BY WATER AND CULTURE conical cylinder which appropriates utilitarian civic plumbing design as an aesthetic means to metaphorically reveal hidden waterways and aspects A major influence on the form and function of San Antonio, and specifically of culture. The form will be custom designed to facilitate stacking up to four the Broadway Corridor, has been water. The San Antonio River and the tiers high and allowing for four sizes of sculptures: 1-Tier, 2-Tier, 3-Tier and Blue Hole (the source of the River), are primary natural features in the 4-Tier. landscape. The River and its source provided for thousands of years of human occupation, leading to the founding of San Antonio nearly 300 years The forms are contextual, symbolic and cost-effective armatures to be used ago. Below ground, water flowing from Edwards Aquifer has given rise to a as the base for sculptures. A custom steel mold will be fabricated to cast number of engineered waterworks in the area. Acequias, engineered and the concrete base form. A typical eccentric conical drop inlet design will be community-operated watercourses, gave form to many streets and property modified for the form to have a smaller, more sidewalk-friendly footprint. lines. For many years, the Acequia Madre and the Upper Labor Acequia The modification also enables the sculptures to present an interesting facilitated water flow for the irrigation of crops in the City. Broadway Street sinuous form when stacked, reminiscent of an animated riverine flow. The itself was originally called River Street. custom design provides for a variety stacking options in differing rotational positions, and for the application of unique surfaces treatments. After World War II, the car became the dominant form-giver to the City, and Broadway Street became the northern gateway to downtown. Over time, many cultural institutions clustered within this area including: the San PROTOTYPE DEVELOPMENT Antonio Museum of Art, the Witte Museum, the DoSeum, the San Antonio AND INITIAL ARTIST ENGAGEMENT Botanical Center, and the McNay Art Museum. With local parks, adjacent The Arts Plan has a component to it that is unusual in the realm of master neighborhoods, and commercial development, the Broadway Corridor has planning. It includes the design and creation of prototype elements to guide become a vibrant place linking to Downtown and Northside neighborhoods and shepherd a sense of consistency and quality along the Broadway Storm and sanitary water pre-cast concrete conical forms uncovered during excavation along River and Acequia paths. of San Pedro Creek are similar to those to be used for the base form of Watermarks. The Corridor. While allowing for creative exploration, the design team will guide conceptual intent is to invert the utilitarian function of concealing natural water systems into an inaugural period towards a collaborative result that attains an element of sculptural reveals. WATERMARKS AS A FRAMEWORK cohesion