Two more parking lots Downtown are about to get the Bold Booths treatment. The program, first announced in 2014 as a continuation of the arts programming around the city’s 2012 bicentennial celebration, showcases striking redesigns by local architects of the attendant booths in selected lots.
The first booth was unveiled last year, in the Great Southern Hotel parking lot on East Main Street. The new ones were approved by the Downtown Commission in August — “Microtower” by Jonathan Barnes Architecture and Design, at the southwest corner of Spring and North Third streets, and “PARKlot” by Design Group, at the northeast corner of South Fourth and East Main streets.
Project Coordinator Malcolm Cochran said that both of the new installations should be completed by the end of the year.
Design Group’s effort features a trick of perspective in which the word PARK “gradually appears out of a seemingly abstract pattern imprinted on the blades of grass,” according to the document submitted to the commission describing the project.
“Microtower” will actually be made out of a repurposed shipping container stood on its end, designed to “imagine the parking booth as a new tower on the city’s skyline, realized at a scale both tall and small.”
Capital Crossroads Special Improvement District is managing the Bold Booths project, with funding from The Ohio State University Office of Outreach and Engagement, the Jeffrey Fund at the Columbus Foundation, the Greater Columbus Arts Council and the Ohio Arts Council.
Although the project was originally conceived as five separate installations, Cochran said that funding has yet to be lined up for any additional booths.