GROUND HERE: COLLABORATIVE WORKS OF KEN MCCOWN

The UNLV Downtown Design Center partnered with the UNLV SimLab to create this Park(ing) Day installation with landscape architecture and architecture students.  Project 100 helped by providing support for logistics.  

Our Park(ing) Day installation showed a confluence of interest in expertise with sustainable design, community-based design and context, and digital modeling and fabrication. 

The design provides an interactive surface modeled digitally to create options for sitting and standing in the space.  The digital model moved to fabrication, and upon the digitally modeled framing, we applied re-used palette wood.  

Exercise balls and balloons animate the space and provide comfort.  The colors of the balloons and balls match with the surrounding landscape of the Fremont Street Corridor.  The balls give multiple seating postures, as does the deck.  The balloons helped to make shade and worked in tandem with the curves in the  deck to signal the installation to oncoming pedestrian and vehicular traffic.

During the day, we met approximately 100 people, made connections in the community and discussed the interests and skills of the students and faculty at the UNLV Downtown Design Center as valuable assets to the community.

Click on the images for a full screen view, and make sure to check out our construction process movie below.

More photos of the space can be seen here.