PARK(ing) Day happens once a year, on the third Friday in September, and is an opportunity for Seattleites to temporarily turn on-street parking spaces into public places. This international event raises awareness about the importance of a walkable, livable, and healthy city and helps people re-think how our streets can be used. – Seattle Parking Day Website

JWA chose to get involved for the first time this year, and built a structure from which we hung plants to give to the visitors of our parklet. All that was required of these visitors to receive a plant was to write a tag detailing what “home” means to them to leave behind in place of the flower. We wanted to involve the Columbia City community specifically, as it has been the home of our firm for the last 7 years. We are so grateful to the residents and wanted to give back to them by providing not only a thought-provoking and beautiful structure, but also involve them in the process.

The concept of the structure was to create a seemingly ‘floating plane’ that could transform throughout the day, from a plane of plants to the tags that took their place. The design took weeks of planning and coordinating, and the entire firm was involved in the process, whether it was the initial planning, hanging the string for each plant, or building the structure itself on the morning of PARK(ing) Day. The event not only brought this little community together, but made our firm stronger itself.

We are honored to say that we won the “Greenest Pop-Up Park” award for this parklet. We already can’t wait for next year’s Park(ing) Day. Parking Day Certificate Greenest Park