PennDesign Alumna Wins AiA Parklet Competition

As thousands of architects streamed into the Pennsylvania Convention Center last month for the American Institute of Architecture (AIA) Convention, they couldn’t help but notice the assemblage of parklets outside, entrants in a competition sponsored by Saint-Gobain, a major building materials company, and the local AIA chapter.

One of the most striking — reaching 12 feet into the air — was a spiraling plywood structure created by Elaine Wong (MArch‘15) and her team from Conshocken-based Array Architecture. And while it may have bore a resemblance to the honeycomb architecture of Chicago’s Marina City and its distinct parking floors, this effort and the others are part of a national movement to reclaim public space given over to parking.

Array’s project was selected as one of two Jury Award winners for the day. “Our idea was to address the Blue Zone, geographic areas in the world like Okinawa and Sardinia with above-average lifespans,” says Wong. “They are places that focus on emotional well-being and meditation, but also socialization. With our parklet, we wanted to explore that duality.”

For the design, Wong says she drew inspiration from the way sculptor Richard Serra manipulates a single piece of material (in his case, Cor-Ten steel). “We used plywood to define a series of spaces that sort of unrolls,” she says. “So, there’s a small private nook in one area but also a larger gathering place on the other side.”

Carving the distinct functions into such a small space overall (about 7 feet wide by 14 feet long) presented a challenge, but Wong remains “pretty happy with the results, especially since we wanted this to offer a strong sculptural element for the city.” And although other competitors introduced different media into their creations — sound in one instance, photography in another — Wong says working on a project that actually had to be built by the designers made her appreciate the “importance of craftsmanship and hands-on experience. We shouldn’t forget that that’s one of the core values in this field.”