The Fields Park
A pivotal site located in Northwest Portland’s River District—and in the heart of the dynamic Pearl Neighborhood—The Fields is a 3.5-acre urban park on a former railyard site. This new civic space celebrates and enlivens natural and cultural histories of place and creates flexible and functional spaces for urban rituals, contributing to Portland’s outstanding legacy of public parks and exceptional quality of life.
The Fields Park
Portland, Oregon
“We are most grateful that this park exists—none of it could have been done without the hard work of remediation to turn a brownfield to a sparkling green jewel of a park.”
A pivotal site located in Northwest Portland’s River District—and in the heart of the dynamic Pearl Neighborhood—The Fields is a 3.5-acre urban park on a former railyard site. Employing landform as a key element, the design of the park is a large central open space framed by a spiraling earthen berm. The berm creates the elevation change required to provide informal, south-facing amphitheater seating. ‘Windrows’ of trees frame the landform within the Park, attenuating the wind and defining several activity zones.
Sustainable site design is integral to the project: rain gardens and constructed wetlands provide on-site stormwater management, and the brownfield condition of the soils was mitigated. The Fields Park ‘re-weaves’ a disturbed but critically important piece of the neighborhood. This new civic space celebrates and enlivens natural and cultural histories of place and creates flexible and functional spaces for urban rituals, adding to the outstanding legacy of public parks and exceptional quality of life in Portland.
Project Team: Koch Landscape Architecture, Opsis Architecture, ARUP Engineers, KPFF Engineering, Geo Design, PAE Engineers, Christine Bourdette (Artist)