An Artful Ocean Avenue

Here LA is kickstarting a fun new project! We are working with the City of Santa Monica to enliven Ocean Avenue, a key corridor in Downtown Santa Monica that connects Palisades Park and the Pacific Ocean on the west to local downtown businesses on the east. 

Right now the street is super wide, with swiftly moving vehicles. We will work with the Santa Monica community to design and install interactive artistic interventions along the corridor, to test out possible streetscape improvements. The artful installations will be up for a few months or so.

We’ve been researching precedents in our studio. Check out some of the ways that other designers have created artistic installations in public places that help to energize the area and draw visitors. You will notice that a lot of the interventions focus on activating spaces at night or providing play spaces for children. Part of the key is to find ways to make the public spaces active for longer over the course of a 24 hour period and to make the spaces attractive to a wider spectrum of users. The first two projects (right and below) were designed by Höweler+Yoon. The lit seesaws are by Lateral Office, CS Design, EGP Group, Mitchell Akiyama, Maotik and Iregular. The hanging art is by 100architects.