Usually, when think about the beauty of Arizona’s highways, we think about the scenery the roads pass through. We think of the landmarks — the anthropomorphic forms of the saguaro cactus, the majestic mountains, or the dramatic colors of the desert landscape. We seldom think about the roads themselves, but it is exactly these highways, bridges, crosswalks and streets that Phoenix has developed as a means to help people better understand and navigate their city. The city has developed these assets by integrating art into the city’s growing infrastructure.
In 1986, in the midst of rapid growth, Phoenix followed many other cities in creating a legally mandated public art program. This program set aside 1 percent of capital construction projects dollars to finance public art. To launch the program, Phoenix commissioned Citywest, a planning firm, to create a master plan to direct public art expenditures during a period of rapid city expansion. The planning team — architect William Morrish, landscape architect Catherine Brown and architect/ artist Grover Mouton — faced a daunting challenge.
Phoenix is a city located within a spectacular landscaped setting, but it sprawls over more than 400 square miles in a messy, characterless way. In order to develop a public art plan that would have an impact on Phoenix, the team had to devise an effective visual framework.
Citywest examined Phoenix and divided the city into 15 working zones, distinct geographic areas, proposing that the art should be located within various city “systems,” water distribution, transportation, and other infrastructure. The plan suggested that the systems that defined the city — its canals, sidewalks, bike paths, parks, public buildings, bridges and even highways — should be prioritized as the framework for creating public art. Artists should be placed on design teams, working collaboratively with engineers, architects and landscape architects to enhance and celebrate the appearance of the city’s infrastructure.
Ten years after its inception, the projects developed within this framework, particularly the art on streets, bridges and highways, have distinguished Phoenix as one of the most innovative cities for public art in the United States.
When lay people think about art the image that is most frequently evoked is an object — a painting in a museum or a monumental sculpture on a plaza. Public art, however, has an entirely different dimension. While public art sometimes consists of a signature work, a public artist is, more usually, a member of a team creating a building, a park or another public amenity. In 1986, the amenities planned in Phoenix were of the largest conceivable scale-expansion of the airport, construction of an arena and expansion of the highway system. The challenges available to artists exceeded most public art programs in other cities to date. By 1989, Phoenix’s 1 percent for art generated $4.7 million dollars, and its projects included, in addition to the airport expansion and new highway infrastructure, street and other small-scale improvements throughout the city. Among the most dramatic were the roads and bridges.
Emerging from the master plan were a series of road-related projects that provide models for other cities. These are all different types of public art projects focusing on how roads traverse and bisect neighborhoods, crossing points and street amenities. Each reinforces a different aspect of city life.
One of the first and most challenging projects was the Squaw Peak Parkway pedestrian bridge at Thomas Road. Completed in 1990 for $220,000, this project was the city’s first to place an artist on a design team, working collaboratively with engineers. Arizona sculptor Marilyn Zwak worked with a team of engineers to design a six-lane, mile-long overpass consisting of three bridges with expansive underpasses and embankments. Excavation for the site uncovered a burial ground of the Hohokam people who lived in the area from 1500 to 300 A.D. Their history became the inspiration for the design of the bridge, an art project that became known as “Our Shared Environment.”
Working closely with the engineers, Zwak studied the support system of the bridge and proposed changes to its shape and fabrication. What resulted from the collaboration is an unusual series of bridge supports, in the form of abstracted frogs, with infill panels of patterned adobe. Adobe was also used for the retaining walls of the bridge. The frog-like supports and adobe relief forms were based on images commonly used by the Hohokam people. The resulting bridge, rich in color, detail and form, creates the impression of driving through an archeological dig. During fabrication, the artist involved members of the community, creating inlays within the relief sculpture on the adobe retaining walls, encouraging them to create their own imagery and thus take ownership of the bridge. Close inspection of the retaining walls reveals not only the artist’s design, but artifacts ranging from a walking cane to house keys embedded in the walls.
At “Dreamy Draw Bridge,” Seattle artist Vicki Scuri worked with engineers to design a richly colored and textured “gateway” tying together a neighborhood and school divided by the Squaw Peak Highway.
Completed in 1994, the bridge spans 10 lanes of road and provides a colorful, sculptural entry to the community. Its red concrete structure is textured with tire-tread patterns reminiscent of both Indian basketry and the thousands of vehicles that pass underneath it daily. Its abutments and piers are stepped up like the mountains and southwest architecture of the region. Its layered, metal overhead screens create a continuously changing shadow pattern along the bridge span.
A third Squaw Peak Parkway project proved to be a tremendous source of controversy soon after its 1992 completion. “Wall Cycle to Ocotillo,” designed by Mags Harries and Lejos Heder of Cambridge, Mass., is a collection of 35 enormous “vessels” on 20 sites along a 10-mile concrete noise wall. The vessels are placed at street ends cut off by the road, atop the sound walls, and along the bike trails. Scaled in size from 2- to 15-feet tall, the colorful concrete vessels take the form of vases and teapots, gazebos and seating areas. They include planting and seating and were designed as unique neighborhood markers. Unfortunately, they also acted as a lightning rod for community resentment toward the brutality of the parkway slicing through neighborhoods, especially because the project was completed as the economy began to decline. The $472,000 price tag, while not exorbitant for the amenities provided, became a symbol of government insensitivity and soon after the project was completed it became a source of public debate, nearly leading to the demise of the public art program. Five years later, much of the controversy has passed, and many have named the project their favorite public art installation.
Not all of the Phoenician street projects are large in scale, however. Many of them focus on the creation of neighborhood identity at an intimate pedestrian scale. On Dunlap Avenue, Seattle artist Garth Edwards created 50 painted steel tree guards, shaped like humans standing alongside newly planted trees. On Central Avenue, Doug Weigel, Howard Sice and Juan and Patricia Navarrette created a series of circular medallions, cut-out metal panels embellished with Southwest imagery and mounted on lighting standards. These projects, like the bridges and sound walls, have enhanced the city’s thoroughfares.
The program in Phoenix continues to prosper, with new streetscapes, bridges and bike trails in various stages of development. The city may still sprawl, and it may still be growing, but it has developed an intelligently planned public art program that is lending esthetic and character to its growth and setting a standard for other cities in the United States.