Overview
Remember playing “the ground is lava” as a child, jumping from curb to curb and clambering over obstacles so that your feet never touched the ground?
The ParkOurPark project is a potential collaboration with the Seattle Design Commission to set up Washington’s first parkour park temporarily in one of the many stalled development sites across the city. The proposal is part of SDC’s Holding Pattern Initiative where 83 creative projects were solicited from the community to re-activate so many of the unused or abandoned lots that are growing in number across the city.
The idea is to construct the park utilizing as many familiar elements from the city as possible – reinforcing and re-using old bus shelters, bike racks, handicap access railings, picnic tables, parking curbs, and whatever is donated to the project for us to make sturdy obstacles out of. We do this already at the gym in Seattle, re-using bathroom grab bars on rock climbing walls, bolting down reclaimed hand railings (into the floors and walls), and building simple vault boxes out of generic plywood.
The Project
We’ve posted the full proposal to the blog that our awesome neighbors at the gym – CAST Architecture – built with us for everyone to read, and you can keep up with our progress using the ParkOurPark tag
At its core, parkour is about movement through an evolving landscape—ParkOurPark would be temporary, disassembled easily whenever the property is ready for development. And, consistent with the philosophy of parkour, the property would be left in better condition than we found it. Traceurs understand and practice the idea of Leave No Trace, remaining aware of and taking personal responsibility for our surroundings. The places we train are our playgrounds, and we rely on our obstacles and materials to support us. We make sure the screws are tightly bolted, and any broken glass or litter we find is picked up. We stress knowing our equipment and our environment, and leaving our training ground as good as, or better than, we found it.
