Project Description
Category: Landscape Architectural Design: Site Design
Award: MERIT
Project Name: GoggleWorks Center for the Arts
Entrant: Charlesworth Fleischacker LLC
GoggleWorks Center for the Arts: Art Park
Located in the heart of Reading, Pennsylvania, GoggleWorks Center for the Arts operates from a former safety-goggle factory transformed into a city cultural anchor. The 145,000 square-foot building draws 250,000 visitors annually for classes, exhibitions, performances, and events, but until recently its campus was bounded by fencing, asphalt, and blighted spaces. Phase 1 of the GoggleWorks Art Park was conceived to transform this hard edge into a welcoming threshold, blurring boundaries between arts campus and neighborhood, and creating a new, outdoor cultural commons for the city.
The Art Park reimagines once industrial site as opportunity: a place where creative placemaking, ecological repair, and civic gathering overlap. Phase 1, completed in 2025, represents the first step in a multi-phase vision to reclaim three acres of urban land for community use.
Design for Phase 1 focused on opening access, creating identity and unifying the campus. The entry courtyard serves as an outdoor foyer and gathering space. Raised planters replaced asphalt paving. Vertical gardens and contemporary lighting soften the once-harsh industrial edge and signal a new civic front door to the arts center. Pedestrian-scale Main Street repeats design motifs and materials and forms the spine of this urban landscape.
A long-neglected alley was converted into a flexible performance courtyard, anchored by the new Thorn Alley Stage. The stage, designed with a sculptural canopy and integrated lighting, establishes a destination for music, film, and spoken word, while doubling as an informal gathering place when not programmed.
Key to the vision of this new landscape was garden making at both a human scale and in dialogue with the scale of five-story industrial buildings. Substantial areas of asphalt paving and neglected lawn have become lush shade gardens and exuberant meadows that introduce a new character of planting to the city.
The talented design team of landscape architect, visionary board members, architect, interior designer, lighting designer, engineers and builders brought this multi-year project into reality.
