Architect finds beauty in the asphalt jungle
Posted by Jesse Willoughby on Mon, Mar 23, 2009 @ 02:54 PM
By Karen Campbell, Globe Correspondent
Most of us walk, drive, and park on it every day, but we rarely give asphalt a second thought - until we trip on a crack or hit a pothole or notice with dismay yet another instance where someone "paved paradise and put up a parking lot," as the Joni Mitchell song "Big Yellow Taxi" recounts.
But if landscape architect Paula Meijerink has anything to say about it, the way we vilify this most common of industrial materials is about to change. An assistant professor of landscape architecture at Harvard's Graduate School of Design, Meijerink has been addressing innovative ideas in asphalt design with her students and is cultivating a variety of grass-roots projects that bring new attention to what she calls "the asphalt universe." Meijerink wants people to rethink how we use the material in terms of both creativity and function.
Passersby in the South End may have been drawn into the "Steamroller Printing" event Meijerink and her crew held in the GTI Properties parking lot on Harrison Avenue last month. Using two steamrollers from sponsor Aggregate Industries, the group created more than 200 one-of-a-kind posters by pressing magnesium plates on tar paper. Featuring a planetary-themed design by Rik Olson and sporting the tag "Rethink the Asphalt Universe," the posters will be folded and included in a book called "Asphalt" that Meijerink is putting together and distributing through the design school in the next three months.
Meijerink, who is a partner in a local design collective called Wanted, also initiated a website, www.onasphalt.com, that is starting to bring designers, students, and industry professionals together with the goal of rethinking the material, and serving as a conduit for greater knowledge and creativity in asphalt design.
"It's one of the most liberating materials of the 20th century, increasing our mobility, allowing us to travel," Meijerink maintains, citing its cheapness, sustainability, and malleability. "It's the real public landscape, at the crux of what we're thinking about in terms of designing our open space, and we have to rethink the role asphalt plays in our lives."
Margaret Cervarich, vice president for marketing and public affairs for the National Asphalt Pavement Association, agrees. "Asphalt is an indispensable part of the modern structure of life. In the US, we do 550 million tons of asphalt hot mix paving a year. One of the important things Paula and her group are doing is just saying 'Let's take another look.' Seldom is something this common looked at with a different perspective. Paula's group is saying 'Here we have this extraordinary material that we take for granted - how can we use it in a new, relevant way so that we're being sensitive to the environment, to the needs of human beings, and still providing adequate structures?'
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