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Science Museum of Virginia staff members (from left) Jeremy Hoffman, Mark Peterson, Elizabeth Voelkel and Kinsey Peeler share lunch in a "parklet" created by Peterson. (Photo by Prabir Mehta)
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Shane Guild (husband of Science Museum of Virginia spokeswoman Jennifer Guild) stops to enjoy employee Mark Peterson's minipark after a museum visit Aug. 30. (Photo courtesy Shane Guild via Instagram)
What can you do with 162 square feet of asphalt? One local commuter, Mark Peterson, made a minipark in the parking space he received for being named employee of the month at the Science Museum of Virginia in August. Peterson, a groundskeeper at the museum, didn’t need a place for his car because he travels to work by bus or by bicycle.
“I was chatting with our scientist, [Jeremy] Hoffman, and we came up with this idea,” he says. “I didn’t want the spot to go to waste.”
Peterson spent about $50 on “faux-green carpet” and borrowed a few benches that were in storage, and the parklet was born. “By the third day, five of us were eating lunch out there together,” he says. “We moved the spot from car storage to a spot to build community.”
On Friday, look for other inspired uses of pavement as 22 parking spots in Richmond are transformed into community green spaces for Park(ing) Day, a design/build competition organized by Venture Richmond. Entries will vary in cost, from budgets comparable to Peterson’s modest creation to more lavish spreads such as Nick Cooper’s $500 design for HKS Inc. Cooper, a vice president and design director for the global architecture firm’s Richmond office, says HKS partnered with DPR Construction to build a space they hope will “elevate the human spirit.”
Nick Cooper of HKS Inc. is leading a team in building a Park(ing) Day installation out of about 2,000 recycled cardboard tubes. (Photo courtesy Nick Cooper)
Reusing some 2,000 recycled cardboard tubes, Cooper is building a wild place in a busy commercial section of Shockoe Slip. Passersby will enter an enclosed space visually separated from Sam Miller’s and Urban Farmhouse next door by the cardboard structure and bathed in filtered light from reused, painted plastic bottles overhead. He’s anticipating some 100 hours of work by 20 people but says the results will be worth it.
“You’re in this green forest in the heart of the city, and you don’t know how you got there,” he says, describing his vision. It also coincides with a planned month of service for the firm; this is one of eight community events they’re participating in this September.
Similar Park(ing) Day events will take place around the world. Images from previous installations show a sculpture made of discarded bottles in State College, Pennsylvania; a succulent garden in Madrid; a ping-pong table in Los Angeles; and a group gathered under the outline of a car in Columbia, South Carolina.
“It started in San Francisco as an art project/public demonstration, highlighting how we use public spaces,” says Max Hepp-Buchanan, who planned this event as Venture Richmond’s director of riverfront and downtown placemaking. He served as director of Bike Walk RVA for six years before taking his new position last December.
A lot has changed in the 14 years since California design studio Rebar installed the inaugural park. Hundreds of cities have hosted Park(ing) Days, and the event has lost some of its underground appeal as municipalities have signed on. In San Francisco, the city has added more than 40 permanent miniparks, known as parklets, and the City of Richmond, who partnered with Venture Richmond for the event, introduced its own parklet program in May 2016. Although the parks will be designed to entertain and delight passers-by, the city's program will be a central theme. Hepp-Buchanan hopes the parks will spark joy, although, he says, “It’s not all whimsical fun. The major goal is to promote the city parklet program.”
The city program permits applicants to build a three-year installation if neighboring residents and businesses support the proposal, but so far, no one has applied, says Yessenia Revilla, a planner for the City of Richmond who oversees the program. “I hope we’ll have some applicants after Friday,” she says. Although the city has built a Park(ing) Day installation before, she’s excited for this year.
“This is the biggest event we’ve had,” she says.
The parklets will mostly be installed downtown, although there are a smattering on the VCU campus, and one each in the Fan, North Side, and Scott’s Addition. A panel of judges made up of city employees and downtown visionaries will select winners during a downtown parklet bike tour led by Hepp-Buchanan. They’ll retire to a 4:30 p.m. happy hour at Bar Solita to announce the winners, including the grand prize winner, who will work with the city and Venture Richmond to design and install a parklet downtown for one year.
Cooper says he’d love to win, but he would have to modify his design to make it permanent. Made out of recycled and organic material such as flowers and plants, this installation won’t be built to last, and visitors will be encouraged to keep part of the space.
“You can take part of it home with you. We want to give people a reminder of their experience,” he says.
Hepp-Buchanan doesn’t know what most of the spaces will look like, but says he’s excited by the vision and enthusiasm people like Cooper are bringing to the day.
“We started with [a goal of] 15 entrants, which seemed ambitious,” he says. “Now we’re up to 22. It’s all a work in progress, but based on the quality of the firms entering, I think you’re going to see some great designs.”
Jennifer Guild, a spokeswoman for the Science Museum of Virginia, says Peterson’s tiny space had a big impact. “It was a really busy summer for us. Pompeii, the Curious George exhibit, and all these people coming by saw it.” She notes the bike share station and Pulse stop right outside the museum and says, “It made people think about the different ways they can get here.”
