Students participate in worldwide PARK(ing) Day event again

Published On Fri 18 Sep 2015 by Grant Hill

Students from the University of Dundee’s Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design are today leading Dundee’s third successive PARK(ing) Day event, when parking spaces in the city are temporarily transformed into public spaces.

Around 80 Interior Environmental Design students are taking part in the global event that sees citizens, artists and activists collaborate to temporarily transform parking spaces into “PARK(ing)” spaces.

Working in inter-year teams, the students will create six environments outside the University’s Crawford Building and adjacent to Airlie Place further along the Perth Road, contributing to a global debate about the city by raising public awareness of the loss of urban green space and how we can temporarily reinvent the city in new and novel ways.

Interior & Environmental Design Programme Director Andy Milligan said, “PARK[ing] Day is part of a wider international folio of modules and projects which we have been pioneering for some years now. Our students are putting Dundee on the global stage alongside 900+ similar PARK[ing] Day projects across the globe each synching on the same day, Friday, 18th September 2015.”

The open-source event, which was invented by REBAR in San Francisco in 2005 attracts companies, institutions and creative citizens from around the world to create new social experiences in the city.

Andy added, “It provides our students with a unique global challenge set in a local context. We've been delivering PARK[ing] Day in Dundee for the last three years now and asking Interior student teams to improvise by designing temporary urban interventions in pubic car parking spaces along Perth Road. 

“Design activism is something we have been developing in Interiors for some time, and indeed 'interiors' is something of a misnomer that needs to be challenged by doing external projects,  but this offers dynamic challenging learning experiences for our students' that reflects the collaborative nature of industry. It's a reminder of the very different forms of spatial practice that's transforming the sector internationally." 

The event takes place in Dundee, and around the world, on Friday, 18th September between 10am-6pm and is supported by Dundee City Council.

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Grant Hill
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University of Dundee
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