a park(ing) day installation

Type: Temporary Installation

Location: Miami, Florida, USA

Year: 2014

Status: Built

Design Team: Silvana Herrera & Armando Rigau

Collaborators: Javier Alonso (assembly) and Perkins+Will Miami (financial support)

Description: Nowadays, Miami’s urban milieu is continually nurtured by myriad cultures as a result of sprouting patterns of immigration. In a city undergoing intense changes like this one, we must ask: Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?

At The Garden of Memories, Secrets, and Dreams – installed in coincidence with the 2014 global PARK(ing) Day (©Rebar Group) – visitors discovered a space to reflect upon their selves and thus revealed a collective identity of the city.

Located at the heart of an area with deep immigrant history, the Garden discomposed the daily routine of heavy pedestrian and automobile traffic. A raised platform - built from repurposed wood pallets – served to extend the public sphere into a metered parking spot. As visitors arrived, they selected an envelope containing a demographic survey and a blank page prompting them to write what they remember from their past (a memory), what they hold most intimate (a secret), or what they hope for (a dream).

Faced with the unexpected opportunity to anonymously share a piece of who they are and who they want to be, urban dwellers cultivated their stories and deposited them into one of three walls. Memories on display, buried secrets, and suspended dreams blossomed in the “garden” to reveal a cross-section of Miami’s rich social landscape. This installation cleared a space where community members converged to remember… forget… and imagine.