Not only is this an interesting solution, but it makes good financial sense to develop (even temporarily) underutilized sites in downtown PHX. Something like this would be right at home along Roosevelt, and help reinforce the City’s commitment to the developing art scene.
This from the Architect’s Paper Blog, posting by Lydia Lee (http://blog.archpaper.com/wordpress/archives/4337.)
While the recession has put a damper on development along San Francisco’s Octavia Boulevard, the mayor’s office has reached out to Douglas Burnham of Envelope A+D to come up with something cool to temporarily fill the two vacant lots that front Hayes Green at the intersection of Octavia and Fell.
Burnham’s plan sounds like a lot of fun. He plans to transform the space into a mini-shopping, dining, and entertainment destination called PROXY–using a series of modular units that will be recyclable in two or three years when things ratchet up again. The vision includes a group of pop-up stores, a food court served by “slow food” carts, an art gallery, and a courtyard for projecting outdoor movies. Design-wise, the spaces will make their transient nature apparent, revealing their infrastructure (e.g., wiring, water storage) and their modular assembly.
We know what those contrived shopping-n-dining plazas feel like (to wit: Santana Row), so we can’t wait to see what happens when you have an architect as the prime mover. With buy-in from the city and from the neighborhood association, Burnham plans to put things in place this spring. See below for an idea of what will replace a parking lot and a bunch of weeds. How inspiring is that?
