Parking Lot Roof Mound Garden

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Parking Lot Roof Mound Garden

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Cultural › Gallery

Parking Lot Roof Mound Garden is the construction of an exterior garden and green roof for Disjecta, a nonprofit contemporary art space in Portland, Oregon. Disjecta is a 12,000 sf former bowling alley converted to a contemporary arts space, a fully equipped 1,800 sf performance space, and cafe, the interior has been completely renovated to resemble the modernist "white box," while, in dramatic contrast, the original arched timber trusses have been left exposed above. The exterior, however, remains untouched. A dilapidated parking lot and an adjoining cinderblock building refer to the ready-made obsolescence of post-war culture. From the outside, Disjecta is typical of its many neighboring strip mall-like structures, sitting directly along the street edge, and in-front of a light rail station, the epicenter of north Portland's Kenton neighborhood.Parking Lot Roof Mound Garden is sited to take advantage of its unique urban context, converting the existing parking lot into a fabricated wilderness, an exterior garden and connected green roof. Uniting two antithetical elements of suburbia, Disjecta's parking lot and roof form a continuous mountainous terrain. Conceived as a ridge of topographic peaks, the exterior garden is a series of piled earth mounds built adjoining the cafe and exhibition hall. These mounds culminate in a plateau-like roof garden, which in turn, sponsors a network of sun tunnels allowing natural light flow into the cinderblock cafe below. Plantings of indigenous flora vary according to root depth, from thick soil for trees and perennial shrubs, to thin soil for short grasses and wildflowers. The parking lot is replanted into the indigenous ecosystem. The landscape addition exploits simple construction methods--light weight straw bale pile, water-proof shell with shallow layer of piled earth as planting substrate--in order to achieve maximum results.