Pop-up parks

12.04.09

[vimeo= http://vimeo.com/6686323]

LentSpace is a 37,000 square foot temporary park and cultural space at Canal and Sullivan Streets in lower Manhattan.  The site opened to the public on September 18th–Park(ing) Day–and is on loan to the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council for three years from Trinity Real Estate, which hopes to build on it when the City’s real estate market improves.  The video above depicts the site’s construction.

This particular economic moment seems ripe with opportunities to build parks like these–“pop-up parks”–where construction projects have stalled indefinitely or where there happens to be temporarily vacant land:

• The hugely popular Brooklyn Bridge Park-adjacent pop-up park that appeared in summer 2008 offered the only view of all four of Olafur Eliasson’s Waterfalls in addition to hosting a picnic spot, sand play area and an outdoor cafe and bar.
• In London, the site of a mothballed 48-story building project was the subject of a  public design competition, the winner of which proposed Leadenhall City Farm, a temporary, low-budget park featuring a garden, market and soup kitchen.
• A three month-long art park in London called Wonderwood, which transformed an abandoned building into a public play space, won honors in the Leeds Architecture Awards new Temporary Works category.
• There were 51 participating parks in this year’s NYC Park(ing) Day:

[youtube=www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJoyuwyOoYo&w=507&h=370]

(via The New York Times, Treehugger, and The Infrastructurist)

Tags: art, audio/video, design, New York City, parks, reclamation, urban planning