Ohlone Park & The Parasitic Parterre

The project was at first an investigation of Ohlone Park, paying attention to the disjunction between its uses (daytime sleeping areas and storage of fully laden shopping carts for the homeless, for example) and its form. Much of the park is largely unarticulated, with peculiar 2D figures on the ground and extruded vents and other infrastructure related to the BART tunnel below. One edge consists of the backyard fences of the houses to the north, while the other is a bike path running along Hearst Avenue. To escape the sun and the street, the homeless population uses the shaded areas along the erratic fence line in undefined sections of the park where defined programs – dog run, playing fields, community garden, playground – are absent.

The 32'-square "park" at Bonita Avenue and Berkeley Way is treated as though it is a fragment of Ohlone Park that has been displaced two blocks to the south. In reality it is a street closure mechanism consisting of wedges of grass and a formal axis of pathways leading to nothing, surrounded by bollards. It is a parterre shaded by mature palm trees at a quiet intersection near the entrance to an underground parking garage. It is almost never used by anyone, except for the occasional smoker, dog-walker, or resting cyclist.

The proposal introduces depth to the flat site, using it as a means of accommodating and organizing both formal and informal programs. By peeling up the surface of the street, the mundane street closure device becomes an activated and inhabited site. The urban surface is doubled, with areas for lounging and a skateboard ramp on the top and sheltered, secure storage for shopping carts (those full of possessions and refurbished empties) and a repair facility/bike shop underneath. The shop provides stewardship and security for the park during the day, and a lit street presence at night. Refurbished shopping carts fitted with locking mechanisms are provided in exchange for damaged ones. Full carts can now be stored for up to 24 hours, and no longer need to be taped or chained to lamp posts in the area.

The new site would draw visitors from Ohlone Park, allowing its fragmentary nature to be understood in a new way as it is reconnected to the city fabric. Its combination of programs intentionally brings diverse users to a small shared area. While this is an acknowledgement that typically excluded users should be considered in shaping the urban surface, the programs themselves occur at different times of day and week, and direct confrontation between users would be somewhat limited. The supervision of the shop staff might discourage misuse of the park, but would obviously be of limited influence and reach.

The project does not attempt to criticize the way that Ohlone Park functions, or to make any moral statement about homelessness or inequality in the city. It does attempt to promote interaction (or at least proximity) between diverse users, who tend not to see one another except at long distances in Ohlone Park.

Landscape Urbanism often seems to mean the preparation of urban surface to accommodate a flexible range of programs. In this case, the program is both highly general and highly specific – the existing flat, mute surface has instigated little activity, and the manipulation of its depth is not an idle formal gesture construed as public art but a suggestion of how new kinds of program can activate a small, difficult site.