Seattle Park(ing) Day Pictures & 2012 Info | Artists Transform Parking Spaces Into Temporary Public Parks

By pipelineeditor on September 17, 2012 in Downtown, events

(photo by The Trust for Public Land)

Come check out Seattle’s involvement in this year’s international PARK(ing) Day. The idea is to feed meters, co-opt parking spots and add more green space to the city for a few hours this Saturday. PARK(ing) Day is a collaborative event for artists, activitists and citizens to transform parking spots into temporary public parks.

Come out to see Seattle artists Victoria Haven as she encourages participants to create works around Washington state geography and place names as part of her ‘Northwest Field Recordings’ project.

——————

Related Seattle Events & Info:

Events: Our Seattle July Events Calendar & Ticket Giveaways
Win Tickets: Fremont Oktoberfest | Beer Garden, Chainsaw Pumpkin Carving, Live Music, & More (September 21-23)
September 22: Seattle Architecture Foundation Harvard Belmont District Tour: The Rich Life Of Capitol Hill
through September 26: Press Start: A Modern Video Game Art Show | Gallery Opening: 30+ Video Game Artists, & More

——————————————

More PARK(ing) Day Photos, Info, FAQs:

——————

From Website:

Seattle PARK(ing) Day
Friday, September 21, 2012 | 10 a.m.-3 p.m. | Free

Seattle Art Museum, grand staircase (and various)
1300 1st Ave, Seattle, WA 98101
(206) 654-3100 | More info: www.parkingday.org

Map here.

The Trust for Public Land and SAM bring PARK(ing) Day downtown by hijacking parking spots, feeding the meters and adding a few more square feet of green space to this green-friendly city. Developed by Rebar, PARK(ing) Day is a one-day global event in which artists, activists and citizens collaborate to transform parking spots into temporary public parks.

From 12:30–2:30 pm, drop by for a sketching and collage activity inspired by Victoria Haven’s Northwest Field Recordings. The Seattle artist will be on-site to guide participants in creating works that respond to Washington state geography and place names. As a nod to the analog technologies of sound that influence her work, Haven will also curate an audio playlist to accompany the activity.

PARK(ing) Day takes place outside SAM Downtown, on University Street between First and Second Avenues.

Free and open to the public.

Providing temporary public open space . . . one parking spot at at time.

PARK(ing) Day is a annual open-source global event where citizens, artists and activists collaborate to temporarily transform metered parking spaces into “PARK(ing)” spaces: temporary public places. The project began in 2005 when Rebar, a San Francisco art and design studio, converted a single metered parking space into a temporary public park in downtown San Francisco. Since 2005, PARK(ing) Day has evolved into a global movement, with organizations and individuals (operating independently of Rebar but following an established set of guidelines) creating new forms of temporary public space in urban contexts around the world.

The mission of PARK(ing) Day is to call attention to the need for more urban open space, to generate critical debate around how public space is created and allocated, and to improve the quality of urban human habitat … at least until the meter runs out!

A brief history of PARK(ing) Day

Rebar’s original PARK(ing) project in 2005 transformed a single metered parking space into a temporary public park in an area of San Francisco that the city had designated as lacking public open space. The great majority of San Francisco’s downtown outdoor space is dedicated to movement and storage of private vehicles, while only a fraction of that space is allocated to serve a broader range of public needs. Paying the meter of a parking space enables one to lease precious urban real estate on a short-term basis. The PARK(ing) project was created to explore the the range of possible activities for this short-term lease, and to provoke a critical examination of the values that generate the form of urban public space.

Our original PARK stood in place for two hours – the term of the lease offered on the face of the parking meter. When the meter expired, we rolled up the sod, packed away the bench and the tree, and gave the block a good sweep, and left. A few weeks later, as a single iconic photo of the intervention (left) traveled across the web, Rebar began receiving requests to create the PARK(ing) project in other cities. Rather than replicate the same installation, we decided to promote the project as an “open-source” project, and created a how-to manual to empower people to create their own parks without the active participation of Rebar. And thus “PARK(ing) Day” was born.

PARK(ing) Day has since been adapted and remixed to address a variety of social issues in diverse urban contexts around the world, and the project continues to expand to include interventions and experiments well beyond the basic “tree-bench-sod” park typology first modeled by Rebar. In recent years, participants have built free health clinics, planted temporary urban farms, produced ecology demonstrations, held political seminars, built art installations, opened free bike repair shops and even held a wedding ceremony! All this in the context of this most modest urban territory – the metered parking space.

And this is the true power of the open-source model: organizers identify specific community needs and values and use the event to draw attention to issues that are important to their local public—everything from experimentation and play to acts of generosity and kindness, to political issues such as water rights, labor equity, health care and marriage equality. All of these interventions, irrespective of where they fall on the political spectrum, support the original vision of PARK(ing) Day: to challenge existing notions of public urban space and empower people to help redefine space to suit specific community needs.

In addition to being quite a bit of fun, PARK(ing) Day has effectively re-valued the metered parking space as an important part of the commons – a site for generosity, cultural expression, socializing and play. And although the project is temporary, we hope PARK(ing) Day inspires you to participate in the civic processes that permanently alter the urban landscape.

Read more about the original PARK(ing) installation on the Rebar website, or to delve deeper into the theoretical framework of the project, consider downloading the PARK(ing) Day Manifesto.

—————————————–