The new public realm will serve as the centerpiece of the creative district located in downtown Ogden and further transform a once abandoned section of 25th Street. At the heart of the district, Dumke Arts Plaza serves as a gateway between the downtown and the east-central neighborhood while introducing a new main attraction for the Nine Rails Creative District.

Just blocks from the historic 25th Street and its surrounding shops, galleries, and restaurants, Dumke Arts Plaza offers a cultural destination for the region’s thriving art scene while boasting spectacular views of the nearby Wasatch Mountain Range. To maximize the flexibility of art on the site, the design team created an art infrastructure system that could host performances and static art in a variety of capacities. A myriad spatial conditions were layered into a relatively small space, allowing individuals and groups to select their own experience.

The plaza provides an arts-focused community space, dynamic outdoor gallery, and an intimate performance venue. Designed to inspire creativity, the plaza elevates diverse perspectives and anchors Ogden as a hub for contemporary art and expression. The space features major art installations and community-led arts programming ranging from small concerts to dance performances to video art. It engages with art in all its forms, but is also a place for daily gatherings and small moments of respite.

Innovating tech for Plaza design and programming

The design process for the quarter-acre Dumke Arts Plaza began with an elemental look at the larger geography and geology of the Salt Lake Basin. Working with Sasaki’s in-house Data & Design Tools, the team built a custom quantitative viewshed analysis tool to study the potential of creating beautiful views of the iconic Wasatch Mountain Range across the site. Sasaki’s Data & Design team used a variety of tools to conduct this analysis, quickly importing over 150km2 of topographic maps and modeling the downtown core from GIS data in order to build out the surrounding context. This analysis informed the function of the plaza while the deep dive into the region’s common geologic formations inspired the three-dimensional forms of the space.

The plaza represents a partnership of landscape and architecture, as an elevated plinth guides visitors up to higher views of the Wasatch mountains while providing coverage over a video art screen, structural support for large sculptures, and electrical support for performances. Native plants were selected to connect the plaza to its wider surroundings, reduce required maintenance, and bring a sense of wildness to the site. Trees provide shade over misters, recalling the foggy Wasatch forests, while tall grasses obscure sculpture pads, allowing the art to appear as if spawning from the earth.

A flexible art infrastructure system allows for both performances and static art in a variety of configurations. Since opening, the plaza has hosted multiple music and dance performances, video art, and sculptural installations.

The Beacon

The Beacon — emerging from the northeastern corner of the plaza — is designed to be seen from afar, beckoning people to the arts district to experience the plaza up close. Folding up from the plaza to frame the northeast entry, the sculpture takes cues from the forms and materiality of the plaza itself. Suspended from this frame, a cantilever magically floats 40 feet over the street, and is visible from all over Ogden. At night, the Beacon glows from within, illuminating a perforation pattern inspired by the Wasatch Mountain Range, and developed by local collaborators Union Creative.

Local Collaborators and Community Engagement

Sasaki and partners Union Creative found new, creative ways to work with the client and stakeholders that yielded significant community input, and ultimately developed a design for the Dumke Arts Plaza that meets multiple needs. From low-tech pop-up engagement to online surveys, the design team reached thousands of people in Ogden. The campaign recognized that in order for the project to be a true success, the plaza design must represent the Nine Rails Creative District and the larger Ogden community in the most equitable way possible.