From parking lot to community living room

Downtown Lexington, KY, is a platform for year-round community events, cultural activities, dining, retail, and higher education. But the opening of Gatton Park has brought a focal point to the city center: a new gathering point for civic life. A cluster of open-air spaces, the eleven-acre park includes a playground, performing arts stage, dog park, water play area, connective trails, and other amenities.

In collaboration with Sasaki, Ummo developed a unifying system of environmental graphics for the signature park — a vocabulary of materials, graphics, and interpretive elements that tie together the site’s multiple programs. Lexington’s railroad history is celebrated through materials, such as powder-coated aluminum, that bring the industrial past into view; industry is also alluded to in the machined precision of dimensional lettering that greets visitors to the site. Throughout the park, directional signs are constructed with aged wooden planks, bound together with chocolate-brown metal bands. To any Lexingtonian, these instantly bring to mind the region’s ubiquitous “rickhouses”: storage sheds where barrels of bourbon acquire their flavor.

Ummo’s signage draws further through time, with stories about the site’s native species, Indigenous inhabitants, and geological formation. A vocabulary of graphic symbols, etched into interpretive panels, exposes the deep-time formation of this unique region.

More contemporary stories also abound, with celebrations of community members and civic leaders who contributed to the park. Complementing traditional signs, Ummo’s environmental graphics continue at the ground plane with textural etchings that unfold across walking paths.