Landscape architecture students invite community to spend the day in the shade

Temporary parklets will be popping up around metered parking spaces in downtown Phoenix this Friday, including one built by a group of Arizona State University landscape architecture students. 

In 2005, a group of artists and landscape architects in San Francisco started Park(ing) Day as a way to encourage community members, students and designers to transform these spaces into parklets for the day. Park(ing) Day is now celebrated all over the world on the third Friday in September. Each year, students in the ASU chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects participate in the global event. 

“In 2010, the students created a travelling park with pink boxes and native plants and took it to two different locations downtown,” said Lora Martens, an instructor in The Design School. “In 2018, the students set up some games in their park, Jenga and cornhole. They created walls to frame the space and decorated their park with native plants donated from a local nursery.”

In 2017, ASU students created a raised topographic seating area, and the Architect’s Newspaper selected it as one of its favorite Park(ing) Day parklets. 

This year the students created a shade structure. 

“Our student ASLA chapter built a shade structure using recycled wood pallets and plastic bags,” said landscape architecture student Kiersten Luttrell. “The recycled bags have been woven together to provide shade to the structure and also used as a mat or blanket.”

Luttrell said they want the community to come out and experience the shade structure. The group will set up the parklet in downtown Phoenix at 125 W. Washington St. from 7 to 10 a.m. Two ASU alumni from Trueform Landscape Architecture Studio will also be nearby with their own Park(ing) Day parklet. 

For more information about Park(ing) Day around the country, visit the ASLA website.