We wanted to share with the community some ways to live their life a little more sustainably.

by Elena Nansen, Lionakis Sustainability Coordinator

Since its inception in 2005, Parking Day events have embraced  the need for new approaches to the urban landscape and focus on temporarily converting urban metered parking spaces into rich new territory for creative design experimentation and activism. This year’s theme explored sustainability and the Lionakis team embraced this theme from the get-go, starting with how we built our parklet. We took the challenge on by only using borrowed or used materials.  (Only a few hardware pieces were purchased new to keep the parklet safely anchored to the base).

How Did We Do It?

Pallets: We reached out to our friends at Urban Roots who graciously donated several of their used pallets.

Plants: The decorative succulents were on loan from our Design Technology Director and the water lilies were found free on Craigslist and now reside in a staff member’s pond. The water lilies were held in place by donated and recycled drinking containers.

Magazines and Paint Samples: Our office had some old architecture magazines and paint samples that were just waiting for their second life!

Furniture: Borrowed from our office.

Base: The team re-used the base from last year as it is very large and an intensive amount of time and material were put into its construction.

Educating the Public: Three W’s: Waste, Water and Wellness

Waste- We produce more and more waste everyday, but what if our waste can be turned into something beautiful? We showcased that “trash” can be re-purposed into something worthy of our attention.

Water- We live in a drought stricken part of the United States. It is important to teach and learn about water conservation and reuse. We used very little water on our parklet to show how water goes through our ecosystem and that it can be reused at the end.

Wellness- Human health impact has always been a focus of sustainability, so we decided to expand on its importance by having one of our walls help educate people about the chemicals present in materials.

Lionakis also asked visitors to continue on with their sustainability efforts after the event. We challenged them to think of ways to join the Lionakis mission in #DesigningaBetterFuture with their very own sustainable life challenge. Finally, Lionakis was honored with a viewers choice award of 2nd place – only narrowly missing the entire event win by three votes!

Thanks to everyone who helped conceptualize, plan, build and staff this amazing event! Here’s some more information on Lionakis Sustainability services.