Organic Parking Structures

I have been working with this idea for awhile. After spending a lot of time photographing parking lots and suburban shopping plazas and office parks I began wondering if we should think more about the patterns in which we move. I wonder if driving could be not eradicated but naturalized. That's probably not the right word but what I mean by it is the process of turning something considered to be automatic and indicative of an unconscious culture into something beautiful, poetic, and closer to nature.

In parking lots nature is confined but not entirely dissolved. Small median strips of grass and planted trees color vasts fields of gray. These spaces, (Non-Sites) are not meant to be enjoyed. Do you ever see anyone picknicking on a grassy knoll outside the grocery store? Do you ever lean back and enjoy a good read on a sunny day outside Wal-Mart? If you have it might have been by accident. Shoppers rushing in and out of the parking lot in their cars may glance at you strangely from their side of the glass.

My idea is not turn the surroundings of big box retail stores into idyllic playgrounds but rather to create a structure in which we at least become more aware of the movements we make in our everyday space. This idea has recently grown in the development of text based structures. Certain words or phrases could emphasize one aspect of an environment or make us a biit more aware of the logic behind our daily routines that we take for granted. Here, the word "local" could conceivably be built in a parking lot of a retail space that is trying to increase business in a small town, where customers who care about local business might be impressed. Of course, I'll need to think of a different word to be built in the parking lot of Home Depot.

Text, shape, and environmental pleasure can combine to give more meaning to our landscapes.