PATRICIA JOHANSONReturn to Timeline Biography

"(Johanson's) Master Plan for "Ulsan Park" scattered dragon imagery throughout the site, unifying hiking trails, exhibition halls, restaurants and playgrounds with waterways and microhabitats... She detailed ecological playgrounds to teach children about water, forests and agriculture, native habitat for specific species interwoven with public facilities, and a "Dragon Trail" of linked gardens along the crest of the mountains. Johanson's design (also) reconnects the flow of disrupted water... "the life force of the site". She adds: "The psychological key to my design was to restore living ecological communities that would sustain the beloved, but threatened, plant and animal guardians of Korean mythology... to establish a resonance between local landscape and inner beliefs". (Ulsan) park contains habitat for tigers, deer, cranes, waterfowl, bats, fish and insects... At least fifteen different projects placed within a matrix of landscape and culture, unified by the image of the Dragon."