Ah'bé landscape architects' Santa Monica Airport Park has won design awards from two distinguished civic groups: the Los Angeles Business Council on June 19 (Los Angeles Architectural Award in Landscape/Civic category), and the Westside Urban Forum on June 6 (Westside Prize in the Urban Solutions/Built category), as well as one from its own peers, the Southern California Chapter, American Society of Landscape Architects, a few months earlier.  
 
Designed by ah'bé landscape architects of Culver City, CA, the much-lauded new park helps to address Santa Monica's long-term need for more open and green space in an environmentally conscious way, incorporating sustainable features for planting, irrigation, and site and sports lighting as well as storm-water management techniques.
 
The park project is a large-scale conversion of an area that has great historical significance in the aviation industry: Santa Monica Airport was home to many landmark events, including the first circumnavigation of the world by airplane in 1924, as well as the founding of Douglas Aircraft Corporation, which manufactured the DC-3.
 
Situated on the south side of the Santa Monica Airport in a mixed-use industrial zone at the city's eastern boundary, the site was most recently used as a shuttle parking lot for Santa Monica Community College and as a storage area for a local car dealership.
 
The site's history and location impacted the park's design at the conceptual level, according to Calvin Abe, FASLA, principal, ah'bé landscape architects. "The airport connects the city to other parts of the world," says Abe, whose firm was involved with all phases of the project, from planning through construction. "In designing the park, we expressed this notion through a series of pathways that abstractly represent people making connections and also suggest taxiways and runways."
 
"The surrounding industrial architecture also informed the design of the park," says Abe. "For example, in choosing benches and tables for the picnic areas and lighting for the site and sports fields, we selected galvanized steel for its industrial look, instead of the traditional colorful, rustic-looking park furniture and finishes."
 
In addition to providing a new green space for the residents of Santa Monica, the park functions as a visual buffer between the airport and the adjacent commercial and residential neighborhoods. The new $7 million Airport Park includes a state-of-the-art soccer field with 80'-tall lighting standards with shielded lamps, an off-leash dog park planted with fragrant ground cover and shrubbery that features separate areas for large and small dogs, a children's playground, a picnic area with six barbecues as well as informal open space and restroom and storage facilities.
 
Ah'bé installed synthetic turf on the sports field using a $1.5-milllion state grant obtained by the city. Infiltration beds under the sports field will detain storm water from portions of the airport and the park, improving the city's storm water management. The parking lots were paved in permeable asphalt pavement for storm-water retention.
 
The dog park was designed as a series of three terraces, each of which drains back into the slope, thereby capturing 100 percent of the water. A French drain system includes a network of filters that prevent any overflow or runoff from entering the city storm drain.