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Stoss Landscape Urbanism to design major public space in St. Louis

Stoss and Friends

Stoss Landscape Urbanism to design major public space in St. Louis

Along with a team of artists, planners, and architects, Stoss Landscape Urbanism has won a competition to knit St. Louis into a walkable, bikeable green strip between the Gateway Arch and Forest Park, the city’s largest, on the western end of town.

Chouteau Greenway (Stoss Landscape Urbanism)
Aerial view from downtown St. Louis of The Loop + The Stitch, Stoss’s conceptual design for the Chouteau Greenway. (Stoss Landscape Urbanism)

The St. Louis nonprofit Green Rivers Greenway asked L.A.- and Boston-based Stoss and three other teams to link the riverside to the center of the city for the Chouteau Greenway. A citizens’ group, the Chouteau Community Advisory Committee, worked with local organizations organized under the Chouteau Design Oversight Committee to review the designs in public fora. According to ArchDaily, over 2,000 residents responded to Green Rivers Greenway’s survey soliciting input on the designs. Stoss’s win was first announced in early May.

Chouteau Greenway (Stoss Landscape Urbanism)
Diagram of The Loop + The Stitch, Stoss’s conceptual design for the Chouteau Greenway. Forest Park is the large green rectangle on the left edge of the image, while the rightmost orange and green polygons represent downtown and the Gateway Arch, respectively. (Courtesy Stoss Landscape Urbanism)

Stoss is calling its concept The Loop + The Stitch, a nod to the circular bike and foot path (outlined in green, above) that will connect downtown and the Gateway Arch to Forest Park and Washington University in St. Louis, home to the well-regarded Sam Fox School of Architecture. The “stitch” portion, delineated in magenta, links the city’s north and south neighborhoods together and to the “loop” with pedestrian infrastructure. Stoss collaborated with Marlon Blackwell Architects and five other firms on its design.

Great Rivers Greenway is overseeing the first segment of the project, between Boyle and Sarah avenues. A now-under-construction MetroLink light rail station, funded by a $10.3 million TIGER grant, will connect with the Greenway along this leg. The station will be completed later this year, as the Stoss team works with stakeholders to finalize its proposal.

This isn’t the first major landscape project to shape St. Louis recently. Last fall, Brooklyn’s Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates (MVVA) debuted CityArchRiver, its plan to reconnect Eero Saarinen and Dan Kiley’s Gateway Arch and landscape with the rest of downtown over a portion of I-44.


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