SEGD_Design - (Page 37) Colorful environmental graphics make an urban San Diego park sing. BY PAT MATSON KNAPP Tweet I Street t’s just a series of 10 x 30-ft. right-of-way strips perched over a major freeway, but Tweet Street is sweet to neighborhood residents, their pets, and the birds returning to the neighborhood after being displaced by downtown development decades ago. Tweet Street was more than 15 years in the making, but it’s a new bright spot in San Diego’s Cortez Hill neighborhood. It was named in honor of the avian artwork perched atop colorful poles: birdhouses created as part of a public art competition aimed at attracting native birds back to the neighborhood. “The idea behind the park was to involve the community by having a design competition for birdhouses,” says MaeLin Levine, principal of hometown design firm Visual Asylum. “It’s wonderful that we now have this great park in downtown San Diego and at the same time we’re encouraging the native birds to come back.” Above: Visual Asylum created a family of bird characters that appear on digitally printed aluminum banner blades and on waterjet-cut sculptural elements atop banner poles. Right: Tweet Street won a 2008 Orchid Award from the San Diego Architectural Foundation. It was lauded for the public policy efforts to build new parks in the urban environment. Opposite: Since the park’s public art is literally up in the trees, Visual Asylum designed banner poles to guide visitors’ eyes upward. 34 segdDESIGN
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