Synopsis
A survey of parking attendant booths around the city of Chicago, which culminated in the construction of a parking attendant booth and a freely dispensed booklet.
The Booth
A single-person, life-size parking attendant booth, constructed from steel, wood and plexi-glass. The booth migrated to various empty and already occupied lots around the city of Chicago from April – November 2000 (when it was stolen), sometimes radically altering perceptions of the land upon which it sat.
The Booklet
The PARK booklet addresses how even the smallest buildings implicate and inform the land they sit on via the mute but pervasive architectural policing of space. The booklet includes photographic documents of existing parking booth structures around Chicago’s downtown business district, booth assembly instructions and a walking tour map of booth locations around the city. The PARK booklet was freely dispensed inside of the migrating parking attendant booth, which traveled to and usurped various lots.
At root of the PARK project is an economic and aesthetic interest in the survival of tiny architecture amidst the highrise structures of downtown Chicago, and their implicit multiplied rent capacity. I was also interested in the daily transient occupation of these lots by automobiles – the vehicles which dictate the design of most all contemporary anthropic landscapes.
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"Park asks us to reexamine the boundaries of new genre public art, arguing for a more expanded definition of audience engagement to include indirect, indifferent, or even hostile interactions." - Daniel Sharp, Agora, 2017
