Students participate in worldwide PARK(ing) Day event again

Published On Thu 18 Sep 2014 by Grant Hill

Interior Environmental Design students from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design (DJCAD) will this Friday lead Dundee’s second successive PARK(ing) Day event, when parking spaces in Dundee’s West End will be temporarily transformed into public spaces.

PARK(ing) Day is an annual global event encouraging citizens, designers, artists and activists collaborate. Dundee took part for the first time last year, and it will once again be one of more than 100 venues across the world.

The students will create six new installations that encourage social engagement by allowing members of the public to relax in spaces where cars would otherwise be parked across the University of Dundee estate and in nearby streets.

The mission of PARK(ing) Day is to raise awareness of the loss of urban green space, generate critical debate around how public space is created and allocated, and improve the quality of the urban human habitat.

Around 77 Interior Environmental Design students from years 2, 3 and 4 will collaborate to install six installations in car parking spaces around the campus and on Perth Road. They will aim to raise public awareness of how they may rethink the city and how it is used by creating sites for unscripted social interaction.

The teams have been developing their ideas over the past two weeks, and on PARK(ing) Day the public will have an opportunity to engage with installations within parking spaces.

Interior Environmental Design Course Director Andy Milligan said, “We’re responding to industry suggestions to deliver short collaborative projects that are socially and globally focused and which better reflect the pace of industry practice and ambitious proposals for future ‘Design for Social Environments’ provision.

“We want to expand the PARK(ing) Day initiative across the city putting the University and Dundee on the global map, and bring students and the community together.”

PARK(ing) Day began in 2005 when REBAR, a San Francisco interdisciplinary art and design studio, converted a single metered parking space into a temporary public park. Since 2005, PARK(ing) Day has evolved into a global movement, with companies and individuals creating new forms of temporary public space in urban contexts around the world.

PARK(ing) Day has evolved to feature simultaneous creative action in 162 cities leading to 920 parking space interventions on five continents, each reclaiming the street for social engagement. Across the globe, artists, activists, citizens and designers and members of the public collaborate on these projects.

The Dundee students’ themes include ‘CAR-ista: a pop up café’, ‘ShapeDundee’, which explores public ideas for reshaping the city, and ‘Drive Your Drawing’, which invites passers-by to generate experimental drawings amongst others.

For more information please contact Andy Milligan on a.milligan@dundee.ac.uk or 01382 385303.

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