The Heights Civic Plaza

Project

Year

2025-2026

Location

Vancouver, Washington

Client

City of Vancouver

The Challenge

How can a place for people reveal the story of the land beneath it to help foster stewardship in a changing climate?

The Heights Civic Plaza is a collaborative effort between First Forty Feet and the City of Vancouver to create a new civic heart for East Vancouver. Located at the former Tower Mall site, the project envisions a community plaza that serves the five surrounding neighborhoods while anchoring future redevelopment in the Heights.

Through the engagement process, a clear challenge emerged: how to design a plaza that supports gathering, celebration, recreation, and everyday leisure—while welcoming people of all ages, cultures, and abilities. The plaza is envisioned to function both as a neighborhood living room and as a destination, accommodating daily use alongside larger community moments.

At the same time, it is intended to operate as an educational landscape, revealing how the land was shaped by the Missoula Floods through immersive, experience-based design rather than traditional signage. By connecting people to the powerful natural forces that formed the region, the plaza helps build awareness that landscapes are not static—and that climate continues to shape place today—encouraging reflection on resilience, stewardship, and a changing climate through everyday experience.

Shaped by the Missoula Floods—understand the land, appreciate its story, protect its future.

Space Programming

The space is organized around a large central gathering area capable of hosting festivals, markets, and events, surrounded by a series of smaller, more intimate spaces along the perimeter for quieter socializing, informal play, and rest.

An adjacent festival street extends the plaza’s energy into future development, encouraging activation, outdoor dining, and commercial activity while reinforcing the plaza as an active civic edge.

Water Feature

Embedded within the plaza is a layered design ecology that tells the story of the Missoula Floods through physical form and experience. Water and play features reflect the movement and force of ancient flooding, while paving patterns draw inspiration from the fissures and scarring left on the land.

This interactive water feature brings the forces of water to life, showing how flow erodes, channels, and deposits land over time. Inspired by regional flood landscapes, subtle changes in grade, texture, and depth allow visitors to trace water’s movement across the site.

Jet streams, bubblers, and mist illustrate moments of energy, pause, and release—while shallow pools collect water in low points, echoing temporary flood lakes. Together, these elements transform geological processes into a playful, hands-on learning experience that connects people to the power of water and the landscapes it shapes.

Paving & Scavenger Hunt

Hidden Animal Discovery is a park-wide scavenger hunt embedded in the plaza’s paving, seating, and landscape. Small animal silhouettes—such as the Columbian mammoth, American mastodon, dire wolf, beaver, and river otter—represent Ice Age species that lived in the Columbia River Gorge Basin during the time of the Missoula Floods, when catastrophic flooding reshaped the region.

Set within paving patterns that reference flood-formed topography, the animals appear along paths, plazas, and near water features—encouraging exploration, movement, and discovery. Durable inlays support tactile play, storytelling, and repeat visits, transforming everyday park elements into a playful learning landscape that connects visitors to the land, water, and wildlife that shaped Vancouver’s history.

Canopies

Freestanding canopy structures mimic remnant trees, providing shade while referencing regional natural systems.

Planting & Land Forms

Planting areas, seating, and sculpted landforms echo erosion and deposition, with even the massing of the adjacent storage building conceived as part of the topographic narrative.

Pump Room & Storage

The storage and pump room is designed as a sculpted landform embedded within the landscape. Its stepped massing and faceted rooflines echo erosion and deposition, allowing the building to blend into planted terraces and seating areas rather than read as a standalone utility.

Material shifts and integrated drainage reinforce the site’s water narrative, transforming essential infrastructure into a functional and expressive part of the plaza.

Free Standing Benches

The freestanding bench logs evoke the massive driftwood carried and stranded by the Missoula Floods. Scattered throughout the plaza, they suggest the scale and movement of floodwaters while offering informal places to sit, climb, or gather. Their raw, grounded form connects visitors to the debris left behind, reinforcing the story of a landscape shaped by water and time.

Erratics as Seating

Scattered throughout the plaza, sculptural benches shaped like glacial erratics serve as both seating and storytelling elements. Their smoothed stone forms echo boulders left behind by the Missoula Floods, with each bench distinct in shape and material. Subtle engravings reveal the journeys these stones may have taken, turning moments of rest into reflection on the powerful forces that shaped the region.

The Impact

Connecting Everyday Life to Land, History, and a Changing Climate

The Heights Civic Plaza is intended to improve everyday life in East Vancouver by creating a shared place to gather, connect, and belong. For nearby residents, it offers space for daily routines—meeting friends, watching children play, resting in the shade, or participating in community events.

By transforming a former commercial site into a civic space, the project represents a visible, lasting reinvestment in East Vancouver. The plaza supports physical and mental well-being, encourages outdoor activity, and creates opportunities for connection across generations and backgrounds. Its relationship to a festival street and future development helps generate local activity and economic vitality, reinforcing public space as essential community infrastructure.

Just as importantly, the plaza is designed to foster appreciation for the land itself. By embedding the story of the Missoula Floods into the landscape—through water, topography, planting, play, and art—the project connects people to the forces that shaped the region and continue to influence it today. This experience-based approach is intended to raise awareness of a changing climate through daily interaction, reinforcing a shared sense of stewardship and resilience for the future of East Vancouver.

Design documentation will continue in 2026, with construction likely beginning in 2027 as funding and phasing align.

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