A Bright Space for the Community

In the final phase of the Kaiser Oakland Hospital Campus buildout, a future building site provides a temporary empty space within the city. Used for the construction staging of the new Kaiser Oakland Medical Center, this corner site created the opportunity to transform vacant land into a much-needed community amenity. A series of casual gathering spaces are placed within a heavily planted grove of fast-growing trees which will now punctuate the southern end of the thriving Piedmont corridor.

Courtyard Oasis

Two large oval hard-scaped gathering spaces are hollowed out of the open understory of the new corner bosque, promoting transparency and exploration from the edge of the Kaiser Campus and busy adjacent thoroughfare. Seating and programming are integrated within the formal organization of the retaining wall and planter edges. Mounded turf pods, for casual repose, break up the scale of this interconnected space for more intimate seating—all while leaving the larger space available for a broad range of uses: lunch oasis, informal play area, outdoor class space, farmers markets, or other impromptu larger scale events. The second, smaller oval creates a more intimate and protected oasis further removed from the buses and heavily trafficked corner of MacArthur Boulevard.

 

 

 

Maintaining Wilderness

The largest oval is edged by an undulating concrete wall which morphs to form seating as it retains a berm against the inaccessible eastern slope. A sinuous camouflage fence of alternating vine screen modules of variegated scale and color snakes its way through the western edge of the grove to define the eastern portion of the site. INTERSTICE designed the eastern part of the open space as a sort of wilderness, separated to protect the public from a deep foundation layback at the Medical Center’s eastern edge where the steep slopes are heavily planted against erosion.

 

 

View

Site Plan

 

Section

Plan

 

Fence Elevation

 

• CAMPUS/CULTURAL
• Landscape