photograph by karen pulfer focht
To understand the park, it’s helpful to see it through the eyes of the woman who turned all those possibilities into an actual design. Acclaimed architect Jeanne Gang and her architecture and urban design firm, Studio Gang, were hired by Memphis River Parks Partnership’s predecessor, the Riverfront Development Corporation, six years ago. The Studio Gang team created a concept that would connect five distinct zones along the Memphis riverfront with bike trails, playgrounds, parks, performance areas, and plazas. The major component was a makeover of Tom Lee Park.
Coletta observes: “Jeanne is a different kind of animal. Every time she comes to something, she’s questioning it. It’s all about curiosity.”
Gang’s list of accolades is lengthy, but these few provide a sense of how influential she has become: She is a MacArthur Fellow, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, has been named one of 2019’s most influential people in the world by Time magazine, was named WSJ Magazine’s 2022 Architecture Innovator of the Year, and was selected as Architectural Review’s Architect of the Year.
“Memphis is probably the epitome of the city on the rise, and it makes me feel good to be part of it.” — Jeanne Gang
Coletta had noticed Studio Gang’s work to make publicly owned buildings more dynamic and integral parts of the community. “Carol saw that and thought it was interesting to take a civic asset and try to refocus it,” Gang says. “She was thinking about this master plan for the whole riverfront, and that’s when she called us up.”
Gang was clearly a good fit for a reimagined riverfront park. In 2016, she had given a TED Talk and said: “My team and I have been applying insights from ecology to architecture to see how physical space can help build stronger relationships.”
photograph by karen pulfer focht
Her team got to work studying the past and present of Memphis’s park system, particularly Tom Lee Park, which included the various ambitious plans that had been written over the decades. Studio Gang had been creating in the urban space for a good while and she had long observed that one of the issues with master planning was that the plan might well sit on a shelf for years until it was forgotten. So she knew her work was cut out for her.
“I was hoping to inject architecture design into the master plan, because you need that spark, something that will draw people in,” Gang says. “That’s what the idea was with our practice, and it’s got an ecological focus and a focus on communities. So, when Carol called about Memphis, I was so excited because it’s exactly the kind of city that I can understand. It’s a city I loved already and the river is the best river in the world, so it just had all the ingredients.”
For her, the well-designed project reflects the community. “They can really make people engaged and feel agency and feel part of it,” she says. “And so now in all my work, I always try to bring that community center spirit to the project, even if it’s like a museum or an airport. This project has the perfect ingredients of when you do architecture, you have a chance to set up relationships between people. It really sets the stage for conversations and activities that can make people come together or invite them to come together.”
photograph by karen pulfer focht
Visitors enjoys Tom Lee Park, a recently renovated river front park in downtown Memphis, Tennessee on September 8, 2023. The River Line—a five-mile walking and biking trail, connects all the riverfront parks in Memphis along the Mississippi River. Photo by Karen Pulfer Focht
And the ecological consideration is essential, because it, too, is about relationships. “It’s about creating these relationships between us, and us and other creatures, and other living things,” she says. “And to do that, they need to interact with other, they have to be working together. Even here, the soils are an important detail because soils are alive, actually. You would not get trees to grow if you didn’t completely revamp these soils and amend them so that they can house life. What I really like is that I think people could come here for one reason and then they might be turned on by something else.”
Gang is mindful of the currents that make up a city and understands that there are always issues large and small that must be dealt with to move forward.
“Memphis is probably the epitome of the city on the rise, and it makes me feel good to be part of it,” she says. “It’s been at the forefront of re-envisioning the future that you want and putting away these things that are divisive. We can’t forget about the past, but we have to move forward. There are tensions and conflicts, but that’s also why it’s interesting. If it was all perfect, it wouldn’t be as interesting. There’s some work to be done here.”
Part One: Carol Coletta and the Memphis River Parks Partnership
