Courtesy John Hoge

It was during this time that Herbert Bayer was engaged to produce a design for the Mill Creek Canyon site in Kent. The Bauhaus-educated artist had gained international-renown during the 1950s with his designs for the redevelopment of Aspen, Colorado, from a dilapidated mining town to a world-class ski resort. Moreover, he had established himself as a pioneer of contemporary land art with his 1955 Earth Mound at the Aspen Institute. The education Bayer received at the Bauhaus shaped his life’s work as he gave himself over to the school’s philosophy of functional design. Bayer’s final environmental work in Kent’s Mill Creek Canyon Park combined the sculptural vocabulary of his Aspen projects with ecological functionalism.

Photo © Christopher Rauschenberg

While several city council members were concerned with the cost, the community was tremendously supportive of the project as a whole, and sold Bayer-designed posters to raise funds to bring the Earthworks to fruition. Constructed in 1982, the Earthworks is composed of a variety of topographic features, pathways, water features, and lawns which function together as a public park, stormwater retention facility, and landscape artwork. The 2.5-acre site, located in the northeast corner of the larger Mill Creek Canyon Earthworks Park, includes multiple grass-covered berms and mounds between 40 and 100 feet in diameter superimposed on the stormwater detention facility. Native vegetation and single rows of poplar trees bound the Earthworks along its north and south boundaries, emphasizing the bowl-like topography. Its role as a stormwater detention facility makes the Earthworks a dynamic landscape: when heavy rains flood the creek, its normal flow continues through a culvert beneath the dam while the excess slowly fills the two-part basin behind the dam. During flooding, the basin becomes a plane of water, with the berms protruding like islands in a sea.

back | next