With Stephanie Werner/DAS Studio

Garden Spots: Landscapes in the sky
1st Place in IDA Land and Sea Competition

We propose to transform billboards into sustainable landscapes. Unlike the inhabitable New York City skyline, the structural silhouettes of commercial billboards populate the city’s horizon, indifferent to any use other than transmitting paid advertisements. We propose to exploit these structural resources for community improvement and to seed landscapes in the sky.

Partnership.

The Garden Spots proposal is carefully balanced to bring together the diverse groups required to initiate the project: local communities, outdoor advertisers, not-for-profit organizations and city agencies. By their nature, billboards present monological messages aimed at a target audience and silence to the local community. Our proposal would encourage a dialogue with local residents without silencing the commercial message. By creating a new amenity for residents to enjoy, outdoor advertisers will gain a measure of respect that will improve community relations.

Local communities will be called upon during the planning stages to provide ideas on plant selections and arrangements that they would most like to live with. We envision this participation to occur with the aid of a landscape designer or master gardener who could advise as to sustainability of plantings, etc.

The Outdoor Advertising Association of America, Inc., a trade organization representing the outdoor advertising industry, already has a foundation that funds grant scholarships and research projects that are considered of value to the industry. The city of New York has many programs, such as its Green Streets initiative, that can provide legislative and regulatory assistance to promote the project. Not-for-profit groups such as Design Trust for Public Space, the organization that spearheaded research on reclaiming the High Line, are in existence to provide technical expertise and funding for the implementation of such public projects.

The Garden Spots proposal attempts to present images that illustrate the exciting opportunities available for partnering with commercial structural resources to provide community and quality of life improvements throughout the city. Two primary sites are presented with two related but significantly different approaches to the greening of the community side of commercialism.

The Site A approach seeks to explore the potential for transforming inaccessible locations, high above city streets, into sustainable gardens that provide visual relief for residents of the city from the harsh backsides of billboards. The gardens themselves will act as small ecosystems providing safe havens for birds, etc. Garden Spots addresses the harsh environmental issues to be resolved in developing these sites through a brief survey of existing technologies. High, winds, soil erosion and desiccation will be addressed by a self-monitoring drip irrigation system that can be monitored from the ground and require minimal maintenance. The use of plastic mulch and hydroponics systems are optional technologies available to sustain the gardens. Arrays of photovoltaic panels will be deployed to provide power to pumps to supply water to the system.