Continuum
Year: 2020
Location: San Jose, CA
Competition Entry: Urban Confluence Silicon Valley
Hinterlands Team: Conor O’Shea
Architecture: Chicago Design Office
Continuum celebrates Silicon Valley’s culture of reinvention.
Closely integrating architecture and landscape, the design sparks a dialogue about the history and role of technology in our daily lives. The new park has urban-scale impact and creates an exciting and interactive public space that hybridizes physical and digital experiences.
Urban Connectivity
The park’s central design element is a monumental, interactive ribbon that dematerializes from beginning to end, illustrating humanity’s evolution from analog to digital technology. It is visible from a distance day and night, and accommodates diverse mobility types. The southwest corner of the site is a natural primary entry, with proximity to the SAP Center, the planned Diridon Station transportation hub, and future development to the south.
The east side of Autumn Street expands into a welcoming, accessible public zone, with protected bicycle routes and a shaded plaza with public seating. A major pedestrian and bicycle path cuts diagonally across the site, bridging the river and connecting the park directly to businesses and the existing green belt toward the north.
Materials
Various materials along the ribbon are linked with gradients of parametric patterning, evoking the “pixel” or the “byte” as the smallest unit of digital information. The sequence includes granite, reclaimed wood, iridescent voids cut through the ribbon, fragmented mirrors, touch screens, metal mesh, and fog.
Landscape
Five new landscape zones surround the ribbon. The Entry Lawn and Theater, west of the ribbon, are grassy expanses designed for urban activity. East of the ribbon, three new gardens expand the riparian corridor, buffering plant and animal communities from light, air, and noise pollution.
The Slow Forest is grown from seed on site, which facilitates advanced communication between species. The Touch Garden is planted with species that respond to human and animal touch—species include the Sensitive Plant (Mimosa pudica) and Venus Flytrap (Dionaea muscipula). The Dissolve Garden is a designated “rewilded” area, where over time plant communities form from seeds dispersed from the nearby riparian corridor by wind or from animals. Along with decomposed granite surfaces, the resulting plant and soil communities help water percolate directly into the ground.
We are never fully analog or digital—we oscillate between the two or hover in overlapping grey areas. Through its hybrid physical-digital design, Continuum captures this condition of flux, which is rooted in a shared human history but reinvented by the innovations in Silicon Valley.
