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High Line designer wins park job in Santa Monica

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This qualifies as very good news for fans of ambitious landscape architecture, not to mention for residents of Santa Monica: Field Operations, the superb landscape and urban design firm that collaborated with architects Diller, Scofidio + Renfro on the acclaimed High Line elevated park in Manhattan, has prevailed in a high-powered design competition for a 7-acre park in the heart of the Santa Monica Civic Center. Santa Monica’s principal architect, Miriam Mulder, confirmed the news in a phone interview Friday afternoon.

Field Operations, a firm led by James Corner and based in New York, beat out five other teams vying for the commission, which includes a 1-acre park in front of Santa Monica City Hall, to be called Town Square, and an adjacent 6-acre parcel, known as Palisades Garden Walk, between Main Street and Ocean Avenue.

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Of the six competitors for the park job, Field Operations was the only one without an architecture firm attached. It beat out entrants including Frank Gehry and a team made up of landscape architect Peter Walker and architect Frederick Fisher.

The jury included Qingyun Ma, dean of the USC School of Architecture; Ken Smith, the landscape architect who is leading the design team for the Orange County Great Park; and Marc Fisher, campus architect at UC Santa Barbara. The Santa Monica City Council is expected to approve the choice of Field Operations next month.

Much more to come.

--Christopher Hawthorne

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