Micro Intervention: Shoe Recycling in Philadelphia

Photo courtesy of knowledge.allianz.com

 FACT: It takes approximately 5,000 pairs of sneakers to create an elementary school playground surface.
 

PROBLEM: The average lifespan for sneakers is 500 miles. For most people, that means replacing their sneakers every six months to a year, which results in somewhere between 300 and 600 million pairs of sneakers destined for the landfill annually. But don’t chuck your Chucks yet, because they can be recycled into playground surfaces, running tracks, basketball courts, carpet underlayment and, yes, even new sneakers.

  SOLUTION: Rittenhouse Sports (1717 Chestnut St., 215.569.9957) accepts used sneakers and shoes, and donates footwear in decent condition to homeless shelters. The remainder are recycled. Philadelphia Runner also accepts sneakers at their Center City location (1601 Sansom St., 215.972.8333). They only ask that you don’t tie the laces together when donating your worn-out kicks. The Nike Reuse-A-Shoe program is available at most Nike and Converse Factory Stores, including the ones at the Franklin Mills Mall in Northeast Philadelphia and the Philadelphia Premium Outlets in Pottstown, Pa.

Story courtesy of Samantha Wittchen, GRID 

Micro Interverntion: Parking Day

Working at a highly successful design firm certainly has its benefits.  The latest is OLIN's indulgence of a scheme that myself and Ben Lawrence conceived as part of an in house design competition for PARK(ing) Day.  PARK(ing) Day is an international event that invites citizens everywhere to transform metered parking spots into temporary parks.

We faced stiff competition and were narrowly awarded the honor.  We used this rendering to present our idea and soon realized, as we were presenting how difficult it would really be.

Our idea arose from two places:  the first was our struggle with the notion that somehow removing a functional space to showcase a park was a worthy endeavor and the second was the unique way in which people in vehicles experience public space.  While piloting a vehicle people are both engaging in a public discourse while maintaining a certain amount of autonomy from within that vehicle.   We reconciled both of those ideas by leaving a car in the space, and then bringing the public realm into the vehicle.  The final concept, titled This is a Park, is both a public space and a private experience—a place for a car and a place for a park.

It was a studio-wide effort with folks chipping in to create signage, secure materials, and rolling up their sleeves to help construct and deconstruct the installation.

OLIN was excited to participate in public discourse about the value of parks in our cities. PARK(ing0 Day aligns with the studio’s commitment to the possibilities of the urban realm believing it to be where design can affect the most positive change. 

OLIN partnered with Big Head Salvage Yard to obtain and construct a broken down car that will be returned to the yard after PARK(ing) Day. Groundswell Design Group also generously supplied the project’s sod.  NextFab contributed laser cutting time for our signage.  Thanks so much to everyone for your help in making this a success! 

OLIN's Library and Archives Manager, Karl-Rainer Blumenthal is a highly talented film maker in his own right, and put together this video of the event:

www.theolinstudio.com/news/2011/10/parking-day-documentary

For footage of OLIN’s Park(ing) Day 2011 entry This is a Park see below:

newsworks (NPR's WHYY)

Pennsylvania Horticulture Society

OLIN blog

The Next Great City: Philadlephia

PlanPhilly