Blue Rainbow
In the search for both flexibility and efficiency, many commercial building types (factories, warehouses, parking structures...) developed during the 100-years between the 1850s and the 1950s sought for empty, generous, and never-ending interiors. While these interior spaces were designed only for private uses, they offer a significant potential for a radical reconceptualization of public space as they have the spatial qualities that enable the acceptance of multiple social sensibilities, temporalities, and functions.
As these buildings face obsolence and abandonment, Holes of Matter proposes reframing these spaces as enclaves removed from commercial and programmatic pressures to be reimagined as new types of public interiors.
In this case, Blue Rainbow proposes transforming abandoned parking structures into playscapes for year-round use. In cold cities, running and exercising outdoors during the winter months can be an arduous task: ice, snow, and low temperatures make it difficult to freely roam throughout the city. This project addresses this need by providing a new type of indoor/outdoor landscape. Although this transformation could take place at any abandoned parking structure, the abandoned Osinski Ramp (760 cars) in Buffalo, New York, has been used as a case study for this proposal.
Project Data
Competition proposal
2013
PlayScapes Competition organized by Building Trust International, Hassocks, UK
Designers
Sergio Lopez-Pineiro
Features
Curbed
