"Parking Day" Competition Results | "Tactical Urbanism" Workshop n°4

"Parking Day" | TerraViva + Needle Design Competition

The exercise has been structured as a competition in which students were asked to propose innovative and unconventional projects in order to transform the parking lot next to "Largo Balestra" square in Giambellino neighborhood. The “Parking Day” scenario has been conceived as a sort of one-day event where cars are not allowed to access in the parking during a whole day in order to let people use and enjoy that space as a public area.

The aim of the project was to imagine a flexible space able to promote social exchange, community activities and citizens’ interaction through a multifunctional design. Vegetable gardens, playgrounds, sport facilities, reading zones, food amenities or any kind of program could be imagined for this project area. A crucial condition was to take into account the fact that the event could last only one or two days, so the interventions had to be easily removable to let the parking go back to the original function.

Students were free to choose to work only on the parking lot or to include the green area of "Largo Balestra" inside their strategy, letting the project flow and contaminate the park as an extension of the paved social area. Modularity and flexibility of use had to be considered as key points during the design process: how the same space could allow different functions according to the program of the day?

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