“The street is a room by agreement… a community room dedicated to the city for common use… its ceiling is the sky.” Louis I. Kahn

A mission to reclaim for parks and people the public space that is currently over-occupied by parking spaces.

exhibition images

The initial Park[ing] intervention occurred on November 16, 2005, in San Francisco on an initiative of the Rebar Group. Their goal was to transform a parking spot into a Park[ing] space, thereby temporarily expanding the public realm and improving the quality of urban human habitat, at least until the meter ran out. By their calculations, they provided an additional 24,000 square-foot- minutes of public open space that Wednesday afternoon in Downtown San Francisco. By doing so, Rebar opened eyes worldwide with their comment on the lack of quality open space in American cities.

Our Mirage installation questions the use and design of our public spaces. The pool, entirely filled with rain water (stored from last Spring’s miniscule rain), and the deck offer a small, temporary public park that provide nature, seating and shade: a place to stop, relax and sit down… that allows us to imagine what else we could do with all these parking spaces.