Parking art

Situated several hours north of Tokyo, the region of Echigo-Tsumari invited a few years ago some artists and architects to come up with prototypes for a new kind of site-seeing in the landscape. Asphalt Spot, designed by R&Sie for the City of Tokamashi, is one of them.

Underneath the folded surface of Asphalt Spot, is a 300 m2 exhibition space. However, you would expect a tourist attraction to be served by a parking space. Here you have a parking space, but no tourist attraction. Visitors have to define what the attraction could be: Is it is the landscape, despite all its uneventfulness? Or the parking spot itself where the inclined ground forces the driver to manage his or her own risk (of flipping over)? Or is it maybe just the very experience of coming to this spot in the first place - that journey with no cause other than to loose one's self in a dérive through the landscape?

More images.
Other works by R&Sie: Buffalo-powered exhibition space; project for the future Bangkok Art Museum that feeds of the city's pollution and (Un)Plug Building, a concept of building that gains its energy from the sun.

More parking stories:

Parking for white cars only (image above), by Helmut Smits.

Previously: Camping on the parking space; Garage galore and An egg car for drivers who can't park.