“Finding Time”, originated by the Columbus Art Commission, was a program of temporary projects for downtown conceived in conjunction with the city’s bicentennial. Its goal was two-fold. First, the program treated the downtown as an open-air gallery creating memorable urban experiences during the year. Second, the program laid the groundwork for an ongoing public art program.
“Bold Booths”, championed by artist Malcolm Cochran and Capital Crossroads, extended that effort. Cochran commissioned five architects to create a collection of parking attendant pavilions to reframe the mute, desolate spaces of Columbus’s ubiquitous surface lots. These temporary pavilions, inevitably replaced through development of the lots, represent vestiges of declining human-to-human interaction in the contemporary city.
The first “Bold Booth” called “Coney Island” presented here, is a 60 square-foot pavilion that replaces a derelict one used to operate the parking lot and valet services for the Westin Hotel and the historic Southern Theater housed within. The theater departed from the classical opera house by incorporating features unique for its day. Most notable was the audience chamber ceiling and its integration with the proscenium. The geometry is generated from a series of conic sections that create an acoustic space still considered to be nearly perfect. Adjacent to the theater, “Coney Island” re-engineers this series of conic sections to expose the geometries that make the theater spatially and acoustically masterful. They are also used to establish a personal engagement between parking lot attendants and arriving customers as they break through a staid box to form apertures. What is seen is precisely choreographed and views into the pavilion are equally as important as views out. From the inside attendants get commanding views of their territory. From the outside, the surprisingly complex interior space and its embedded programmatic elements are revealed to visitors.