there’s a way that temporary can end up being a substitute for thoughtful committed long term investment. I’ve heard John Bela at Rebar talk about the idea of iterative place making, which is another great thing that parklets enable you to do. The idea is to do a test run, in the real world, with a certain design, and a certain approach. Then when it comes to the end of its life, if you’re going to go permanent, you have a chance to get things right the second time around. And that very much what could be happen with parklets in the near future, we use them as test runs and eventually implement permanent version. So all in all I think its awesome, and its really engaging for a young generation who might have to wait an awfully long time to be able to work on the kinds of public spaces that they’re interested in creating. In the mean time, having one foot in that kind of guerilla intervention world, and legitimizing that… it really reflects well on the civic culture in San Francisco. The fact that the organs of government were able to see the potential and facilitate more of it instead of just shutting it down the way it might have happened in another city… that’s really important. There’s also a hunger on the part of the planners and the people who work in the incredibly constrained setting of San Francisco culture, and CEQA and regulatory frameworks. They are able to now say to themselves something like “Oh my gosh, there’s a way to actually do something! I’ve wanted to do something for my entire career, and I’ve never been able to do anything, and now I can!” “At the big picture level one of the things that parklets and these other experiments are doing is demonstrating the power and value of public space, and that turning a parking space into a public space isn’t just about taking
away a parking space. It’s about something else, it’s about creating new life in the city, it’s about creating a space for things to happen, and guess what? When you do that, things actually do happen. The kind of reticence and nervousness will get defused when people say, ‘Hey you know, I like what’s happening here, I can see it with my own eyes!’ These larger ideas about revitalization, some people are equipped in their minds eye to see them and some people aren’t. So for people to see that its not threatening and that the benefits far outweigh the negatives… I think that’s really powerful. Collectively all of this is showing San Francisco that the city is not finished, and not perfect, and more importantly that there are stories yet to be written and our public realm can still be much better.” BUILD YOUR IDEAS Criag Hollow & EAG | For the Community by the Community Parklets are opportunities to engage in design that will be quickly realized. Short-term projects such as parklets allow you to be creative, test out your research, experiment with new concepts, and get to see them built. Research Becomes Architecture Luke Ogrydziak and Zoe Prillinger founded Ogrydziak/ Prillinger Architects (OPA) in 2000 with a commitment to research as a critical part of the office’s practice. This commitment led OPA to a unique and experimental area of computational research; a computer program based on the concept of responsive growth. Although this work was intellectually satisfying for OPA, it was somewhat limited to
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