Brighton Park + Neighborhood Plan

BRIGHTON PARK + NEIGHBORHOOD PLAN

Summerville, South Carolina

Nexton Brighton Park celebrates a unique sense of place informed by history, ecology, and modern design principles. Consolidating three blocks into one, the design developed three zones appropriate to topographic conditions and low country ecology.

Rendering visible this critical relationship between water and planting grounded the New Town to timeless regional patterns. The development of a unique modern language for site structures and forms- postal pavilions, overlooks, pocket parks, and pathways was intended to create a unique identity for the public realm. Nexton Brighton Park provides a linked series if iconic spaces for the community that are highly integrated with the surrounding neighborhood as well as with the natural flows and ecological patterns of the site. The park’s xeric, mesic, and hydric zones correspond to unique programming and distinctive plant communities. The park’s forms mediate between the traditional architecture of the neighborhoods and the surrounding Carolina low country.

The project received the 2018 Presidential Award of Excellence from the Virginia Chapter of the ASLA, the Award of Excellence from the South Carolina ASLA, and will receive a Recognition Award at the 2019 ASLA Southeastern Regional Conference. Seamon Whiteside was the Landscape Architect of Record for the project.

Brighton Park in late afternoon

Greeting House (community center) under construction in background

A portion of the Landscape Master Plan with Brighton Park at the center.

The park is connected to the landscape system by several pedestrian and landscape corridors.

View of Great Lawn from above Postal Pavilion.

Nexton Brighton Park plan

Nexton Brighton Park plan with diagram describing topographic zones and hydrologic flow in the park. Stormwater is treated through a series of filters (treatment train) as in flows downhill.