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Spokane
Veterans Memorial Arena
701 West
Mallon Avenue
Spokane, Washington
Completed 1995
Purpose:
The Spokane Veterans
Memorial Arena is the premier entertainment venue in the region.
Designed and constructed as a replacement for the old Coliseum, the
Veterans Memorial Arena provides the Spokane region a multi-use facility
that will serve the community for decades to come.
Context:
The site is located
adjacent to Riverfront Park and the Historic Flour Mill which lies along
the banks of the Spokane River. The area is surrounded predominately by
businesses, entertainment and city government buildings.
Quality of Life and Urban
Design Elements:
The driving factor in the
site/landscape design was to create an extension of Riverfront Park into
and around the Arena site enabling a contextual fit. To achieve this we
incorporated elements of Riverfront Park including the columnar basalt
walls flanking the Grand Staircase and sculpture garden; large caliper
Red Oak and Ash trees on bordering streets; and the relatively simple
overall landscape design. Sustainable elements include a wide variety of
Lilacs in the garden areas east of the building and a focus on
native-type and adapted plant materials. Parking lots were designed as
“outdoor rooms”, with different species of trees used as borders to
define these large spaces. The result lends a more human scale feeling
to an otherwise expansive asphalt area. Tree selections offer a diverse
range of color, texture and year-round interest.
Outdoor spaces around the
Arena were created to provide views to Riverfront Park, with human-scale
seating areas under the layers of flowering Cherry trees. The large
grassy swale serves multiple functions; acting as the facilities’ major
stormwater detention area; it also doubles as an outdoor play space in
drier weather.
As a public facility, the
design was created with good site-lines to and throughout the site to
provide visitors with a better sense safety as they move through the
landscape.
The Veteran’s Memorial
Arena provides a significant enhancement to the community through the
marriage of architecture, site planning and landscape architecture. The
landscape was designed to provide users with a human-scale experience
and a clearly recognizable, cohesive understanding of the outdoor
environment.
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