I was going through my pictures the other day and couldn’t stop laughing at all the ridiculous parking situations I kept coming across from my time in Mexico City, a place notorious for crazy parking jobs. Here’s a couple fun ones…

Yes, the above photo is not one but two cars parked up on the sidewalk. And so nicely parked even. And another time I passed a jeep that parked nose first right on the curb radius. That’s right, on the curb radius. That’s when you know people are hard up for a space. And motorcycles often go driving right down the sidewalks too. Because of them and the cars, big metal bollards are placed all over. Between the parked cars, motorbikes, bollards, street vendors and whatever else, walking around Mexico City is something of an obstacle course.

images (c) Lisa Town

Me in my park, image via Unpaving Paradise

Last Friday the 18th was the annual PARK(ing) Day event where people from all corners of the globe take over parking spaces and turn them into temporary public parks for the day. This is an especially fun event because it’s not limited to designers, but includes anyone who’s willing to take the day off from work and put together a park to hang out in including local businesses, magazines, food vendors, community groups, artists, musicians, etc. It’s a great way to bring the community together in public spaces to interact, engage and play.

This year I had the opportunity to get together with two friends and fellow landscape architects, Brett Milligan and Jason King, to have a little fun up in Seattle while supporting some fabulous urban void activation headed up by Keith Harris on the People’s Parking Lot in Capitol Hill. A full list of the participating groups can be found here. Here’s just a few of the highlights…

In the middle of the whole event, the Capitol Hill Community Council and Unpaving Paradise, sponsors of the event, teamed up for a lush, tent-covered park. The park become a welcome place to relax since the site was bathed in hot sun for most of the day.

The Seattle Arts and Lectures park titled “Words Matter” featured a table of cookies, tea and inspiring books along with a board that encouraged people to paint, draw and incorporate inspiring phrases in a community art piece. One book on their table that particularly caught my attention was “Wake Up In Brightness”, a book they published that features poetry and prose from students. It was mpressive to see entries from students as young as early grade school years craft such beautiful words.

Brite Collective, an extension of JOIN, provides fun lectures and events aimed at uniting Seattleites through design and igniting inspiration to take part in their creative community. For PARK(ing) Day, Brite held an event called “Negative Space: A Biographical Field Sketch” which included a 1 hour interpretive walk to explore the identity of space, discuss cognitive mapping and sketch in a provided journal.

Hollow Earth Radio, a community-run online radio station, had a tent on-site where they were taking the urban confessions of anyone who was interested in talking. These will then appear on their website at a later date.

Flash Volunteer was there with some green space in support of their pretty cool project that helps bring events and volunteers together in an organized fashion.

This park called “Air Stream” was created by a group of designers who called themselves Signal to Noise. The intention was that the plastic rods along the edge would wave in the wind but unfortunately or fortunately, it was sunny and not at all windy that day.

Our neighboring park by the Seattle-based multidisciplinary firm SvR Design was complimentary to ours with a rec room outfitted with a couch, comfy chairs, a table full of games and a popular ping pong table.

One of our personal favorites was the sweet tunes 12 Hour Notice was pumping out from his pimped out ride. Seriously, the shopping cart was pretty cool, pictures don’t do it justice. He was there in his spot for most of the day, hardly moving. I’m not even sure he ate anything all day. When I went over to tell him how much we appreciated having him on the lot, I also found out that he was incredibly nice.

The only thing that got the mobile dj to sit down was the hour long performance from Toy Box Trio towards the end of the day. They brought with them a concertina, toy piano and tuba that mixed together for an interesting sound with a carnival flair. At one point they even introduced the sounds of an old fashioned typewriter.

Our park titled “4-Play” was split into quadrants of two areas of game play and two areas of vegetated seating, displaying that a park isn’t just made up of recreation or green space but instead consists of a good mix of both.

The games in the park consisted of a much longer twister game made of soft carpet and an oversized connect four game that became the highlight of the park and brought out the kid as well as the competitiveness in many people that stopped by to play a game or two.

In our green space, we had grassing seating “booths” that featured retro carpet dots covering one side for a soft surface to lean against and a poster board on the other side filled with planter pockets of bright yellow in both the national and Seattle PARK(ing) Day posters.

images (c) Lisa Town

At the end of the day an awards ceremony was held that included all parks within the Seattle metro area. Our park won the award for “Most Playful” park and we left Seattle with a prize of some park-based games from two local game shops. It was a fun event and we met lots of wonderful people and it was great to be a part of the local community for a day. Thanks to everyone on Capitol Hill that was involved and to Keith Harris for organizing the memorable event. I’m already looking forward to PARK(ing) Day 2010!

This year I think Park(ing) Day is going to be very exciting as it seems that people from all around the world are getting into it even more than ever with heightened enthusiasm, online social sites about the event, more cities taking part and even trying to find ways in how they can push the boundaries of the event.

In New York City, they are adding an extra layer to the event that they are calling POP.Park which challenges the Park(ing) Day participants to make not just a park for a day but a pre-fabricated, transportable park that could be taken anywhere and used any time and would essentially be able to just pop up quickly and assume it’s duty as a temporary park space, just as easy as one my pop out a folding chair.

From the website: “POP.Park prototypes should create a relaxing, safe and visually compelling environment for people. POP.Parks must provide physical delineation from traffic and be contextual to the city street environment. Physically, POP.Parks must fold into a box (or reusable bag or tote) that one person can carry while walking or riding public transportation. When assembled, POP.Parks should be no larger than 8′x15′ – the size of a regular car parking spot. The cost of building a POP.Park must not exceed $20.00.”

So as of today, the September 18 event is only a month away so it should be a lot of fun to see what everyone creates, especially since I will be participating this year as well!

And what about the lovely poster of the overgrown car designed to promote this years Park(ing) Day event? I like it. But perhaps that’s because it reminds me of a beautiful screen printed poster I have on my wall from the 2006 album release show of one of my favorite bands, The Long Winters.

Last week was really good, my friend and colleague from Mexico City, Miguel, was visiting for the week and we made our way all around Portland and even spent a day in Seattle.  It had been 5 years since he was last in the northwest so there was plenty to see.  We took the max in to the downtown core then spent the day on public transit or walking.  I hate seeing a city by driving and parking, walking and public transit it the only way to get a good feel of how a city is really connected.

We started off with the south waterfront district in Portland which was an area both of us had done some past work.  We entered the area via the streetcar and that was when I learned something that amazingly I hadn’t picked up on before.  The flowers on Pear trees have a terribly funky smell!  I’ve always noticed the smell and would wonder where it was coming from but never before associated it with a tree.  Good to know…

Back when he was here, none of the current tall buildings existed and now the district is really starting to take shape.  Even a neighborhood park is under construction, designed by Hargreaves Associates, with construction expected to be complete in August with the full park open in October after the lawn has been established.

First stop on the list was to check out the OHSU roof gardens.  There are two of them and now I can’t remember what floors they ended up being on because it took us a couple tries till we located the right one.  I just remember it was off the plastic surgery floor.  One of the trippiest things about the roof is that the aerial tram flies right by.

The roof garden itself was set on a grid with concrete pavers, corten steel framed raised planter boxes and wood benches.  The boxes for the trees were quite large and Miguel said were originally intended to have bigger trees than what ended up going in.  With the 12 inches below and then the 36 inches raised above, that is a lot of soil.  

Unfortunately the roof garden is almost always completely covered in shade which doesn’t make it terribly inviting, even on sunny days like the day we were there.  But perhaps in the summertime during hotter weather this area is more inviting.  I love the Black Mondo Grass.

On our way over to check out the Meriwether, we passed a surface parking lot that was completely curbless.  The only trouble is that in some areas, the asphalt was crumbling into the planted areas.

We made it in to see the inner courtyard of the Meriwether which was fairly simple with hardscape and planters and a simple water feature.  But the best part is actually outside where the townhouses open right up onto the pedestrian street.  Here the stormwater is collected into planters…

A natural river-like feature runs under the wood bridges that lead up to some of the residents’ units.