Bike Hive — Philadelphia Park(ing) Day 2019
We are proud to participate in Park(ing) Day, an annual daylong global event where citizens, artists, and activists collaborate to temporarily transform metered parking spaces into temporary mini-parks or parklets. A team in our Philadelphia office took on the challenge this year and envisioned an installation to promote bike riding — Bike Hive.
THE CONCEPT
Bike Hive promotes riding bikes as a viable, enjoyable, and sustainable alternative means of transportation in order to help our society move towards a car-free future. By sharing where to ride, how to maintain your bike, and examples of people enjoying bikes from our firm, we hope to inspire more people to give cycling a try!
Where do I ride?
For those who aren’t familiar with urban cycling, it can seem scary or impossible to even consider. In order to address these concerns, we invited members of Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia, Philly’s largest bike advocacy organization, to explain where to ride. We also invited members of The Big Heat, a local cycling team for women, trans, femme, gender non-conforming, and non-binary folks.
My bike always breaks
It may feel like your bike is broken all the time. This doesn’t have to be the case! We offered opportunities to learn some basic maintenance to help keep your bike running smoothly.
Bohlin Cywinski Jackson loves bikes!
There exists an overlap of interests between architects and cyclists. Our firm is no exception to this tendency. Sprinkled throughout our installation, we shared stories about the bike activities we enjoy, types of bikes we ride, what percent of us commute by bike, and what other kinds of transportation we use. We also shared our personal bike stories, whether it’s a daily commute, or bike-packing across Mongolia. These included stories from a cross-section of our firm, including staff from all our offices.
Because Park(ing) Day fell on September 20 and our firm committed to participating in the Global Climate Strike, led by Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg, we incorporated #ClimateStrike into our installation. Moving toward more human-powered transportation is one important step in addressing the current climate crisis. Thanks to our vocal support of the strike, our team received the Golden Cone Award for Climate Warriors. The Golden Cone Awards highlight the teams whose parklets inspire and delight.
Bohlin Cywinski Jackson Park(ing) Day Design Team
Sophia Lee, Bryan Sistino, Habeeb Muhammad, Nicole Salnikov, Daniel Stanislaw, Tina Faust, David Kitchen.
Bohlin Cywinski Jackson exhibit contributors
Steven O’Hara, Ida Lautanala, Carolina Tamayo, Jon Szczesniak, Sophia Lee, Anthony Pregiato, Frank Grauman, Chuck Nawoj, Adam Pazan, Patreese Martin, Branden Collins, Tom Breslin, Nicole Salnikov.
