THE PATH MOST TRAVELED
Scottsdale, Arizona, 2001

Teamed with architect Andrea Forman and landscape architect Jeffrey Engelmann, Carolyn Braaksma designed images and textures on highway bridge piers and eight miles of concrete noise abatement walls and on]off ramps for Scottsdale’s Pima Outer loop highway infrastructure project. The site-specific imagery includes lizard shapes, lizard skin texture, desert plants, topographical references, Maricopa Indian patterns, and rustication that emulates saguaro ribbing. The designs were directly incorporated into safety railings, wall treatments on the neighborhood sides of sound walls, and highway walls as tall as 40 feet. The team closely studied similar projects in the Phoenix/Scottsdale area to confirm that their work was unique but still within the same family of work. They especially chose colors that are rarely seen in highway work—desert tones of pink, lavender, and sage green colors give their work an engaging and surprising, but familiar, quality.