As an intern at Fishbeck, I helped my team gather community feedback, draft, revise, and render design concepts for a city plaza in Ypsilanti, Michigan.
I gained skills in Photoshop, client engagement, municipal projects, and professional design collaboration.
Community Engagement
As part of our contract with the Ypsilanti Downtown Development Authority (DDA), we hosted two community engagement meetings and created a public survey. Fishbeck's principal landscape architect, Mark Vysoky, and I worked together to design the materials needed for this step in the project. I designed the following graphics for these meetings.
With direction form Mark, I designed image boards to gather the different forms and features that Ypsilanti residents wanted to see in this project. Community members were given stickers and directed to place on whichever design style they felt would fit best in the Depot Town Plaza.
Finally, we gathered programmatic themes from the survey, condensed them into the most popular requests, and made a board for the community to vote on.
Community members using image boards to vote on their preferences for the Depot Town Plaza redesign.
Our public engagement efforts told us the core features that the city DDA, residents, and local business owners wanted to see in their plaza space:
- A stylistic ode to the historic train tracks and Freighthouse adjacent to the site
- Improved circulation and parking options within the plaza area
- More spaces for public gathering and community events
- Greater wayfinding between River Street and the plaza space
Preliminary Designs
Having ample feedback from public and private stakeholders, Mark and I began the design process. He drafted the basic concepts and allowed me to render and format them for the client.
Depot Town Plaza concept A
Depot Town Plaza concept B
River Street concept
Concept A encapsulated a more traditional design style. It prioritized circulation, parking, and emergency access for the adjacent business and the Freighthouse event center.
Concept B prioritized an industrial and locomotive form while providing greater public event space.
The River Street concept prioritized stylistically consistent welcome signs and wayfinding. We also worked with traffic engineers to improve the unique intersection of East Cross Street, River Street, and the Amtrak train tracks.
Final Designs
The preliminary concepts were circulated throughout the Ypsilanti Government and the community. Following the DDA's accrual of feedback, we had a meeting to discuss features that worked and those that didn't.
Using the city's critiques, Mark and I designed a final concept. It both responds to the client's feedback and adds detail to the concept.
