DUAL - PARKING DAY

As an intern with DUAL in Providence, I collaborated with DUAL's two principal architects, Ian Baldwin and Jonathan Bell, as well as fellow intern Tyler Luke, to design and build an installation for Providence's Parking Day. Parking Day is an opportunity for local businesses to adopt a parking spot along Providence's Westminster Street for a day, transforming it into a park or other public space. 

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We began our Parking Day ideation by researching interesting forms and ideas as inspiration for a series of concept sketches, which we compiled over the course of a few days. After critique and discussion of our sketches, we quickly moved into prototyping mode by creating a few small sketch models. From here, we were able to analyze the potential impact and feasibility of each concept and decide on a direction for our full-sized installation.

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Our full-sized prototype drew on the most promising features of our sketch models and made heavy use of the materials we had on hand, including the remains of the previous year's installation. The full-sized prototype allowed us to experiment with concepts of sound, space, and material in a way that sketches and models couldn't, lending us valuable insights into which features were most impactful. As we refined the installation, we found that our disparate ideas came together naturally to form a cohesive narrative.

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Our final installation invoked a dreamlike pond, which the observer traversed using boardwalks along the length and width of the space. Underfoot, three-dimensional 'clouds' of balloons were trapped in a flat grid, like the reflections of clouds in water. Balloons suspended from flexible tubes seemed to drip into the clouds below. The reedlike tubes swayed when pushed by the wind or by an observer, causing the water within the hanging balloons to slosh as the observer moved. Movable orange stools allowed passers-by to create their own meditative space within the installation, and created focal points within the white of the balloons.

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The installation was designed as a set of two folding quadrants, with pre-strung grids. The boardwalks were attached to the quadrants with hinges, and holsters for the vertical pipes were fitted to the inner walls of the quadrants. This allowed the installation to be easily carried between the studio and the street in its folded state, then quickly assembled by unfolding the base and inserting the vertical pipes. On Parking Day, minimal setup and strike meant more time for the architects to interact with the installation's visitors.