Cory Lavigne, AIA, designs public spaces as part of his role as principal at Inform Studio in Detroit. Earlier this year, a project that he contributed to, the Van Leesten Memorial Bridge in Providence, R.I., won a Regional and Urban Design Award from AIA. We talked with Lavigne about the challenges and rewards of designing outdoor spaces for people to enjoy.
Providence was affected dramatically by the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, which broke up and divided cities everywhere. I-95 crossed through the city and cut off the downtown, and residents continued to experience the disconnect between neighborhoods, and the aftereffects, for decades.
In the 2000s, the city took initiative. City leaders asked the DOT to relocate the section of the highway that had cut off the community further south for years. Providence was left with this abandoned infrastructure that the city looked at as an opportunity to say, “Okay, well, let’s host an architectural competition and see what we can do to reconnect and heal.”
The Van Leesten project is clear evidence of how smart planning and thoughtful design can yield catalytic results from both social and economic standpoints. You have a city that’s embracing this opportunity. Providence has a burgeoning arts, culture, and tourism initiative that was exploding along the waterfronts and throughout the city, and we had this unique chance to build on the momentum of what was happening there.
Beauty is such a subjective concept, right? It goes beyond functionality, and it goes beyond efficiency. Beauty encompasses the ability of a space to evoke emotion, to create identity. When you achieve your objectives in terms of functionality, beauty starts to emerge because you’ve created this space that people want to come to.
We had no idea that Van Leesten was going to be as catalytic as we hoped it would be. Sure enough, from the ribbon–cutting day in 2019 onward, it was just packed with people. You could already see some of the investment that was being spurred by the bridge. Buildings were rising up on both sides of the water. We started to see people on Instagram sharing these intimate moments. There are so many great things that you can’t imagine are going to happen when you’re designing and working through a project. People are taking wedding photos on the bridge; they’re taking yoga classes on the sun deck. In your wildest imagination, you don’t think it’s going to become such an integral part of the city.
