Abstract
A deserted town once vibrant with active commercial activities around a railroad station now tries to find a way to escape from depression and revive its life with a renewed civic pride. An open space adjacent to the Main Street, the commercial district of Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts, is waiting to be transformed and reconfigured to be a new ecological park to boost the economy of the community. Bridge Park is 26-acre land abutting the Cape Cod Canal with a railroad bridge as a backdrop. The existing condition of the site with a small salt marsh, woodland, lawn, and the vestige of old railroad easement along with the proximity to the commercial district poses an interesting question of how to make a medium scaled ecological park within an urban context. This paper examines the winning design proposals for the Bridge Park submitted to the International Design Competition held in April, 2005. Six winning proposals were introduced and discussed in terms of categories related to the trend of contemporary landscape design such as; 1) ecological ordinariness and geometric figures, 2) topography and spatial imagination, 3) minimal programs and open put 4) time and process oriented design, 5) park and economic effects and 6) diagrammatic plan and photo montage. Bridge Park Design Competition confirms the complex characteristics representing the contemporary landscape design overcoming the dichotomy between nature and culture and the 'pastoral ecological design' and 'landscape as an art'. The Park becomes the activating agent for the community rejecting the conventional and passive role as a romantic picturesque landscape. Bridge Park International Design Competition is a meaningful event to test the idea of new ecological urban park, and to fine-tune the trend of the contemporary urban park design.