Inter­face Stu­dio LLC is a full-service urban design com­pany founded in 2004 by Scott Page. As a vet­eran of a large, multi-disciplinary firm, Scott estab­lished Inter­face Stu­dio to pur­sue high plan­ning and design qual­ity and a close work­ing rela­tion­ship with clients. Today, their grow­ing prac­tice works col­lab­o­ra­tively on a diverse mix of projects across the coun­try rang­ing from a city-wide hous­ing strat­egy for Rochester, New York to a mas­ter plan for Paterson’s down­town in New Jer­sey. Inter­face Stu­dio has worked exten­sively in dense, mixed-use urban places with a unique sense of opti­mism and inno­va­tion. Their work is cal­i­brated toward imple­men­ta­tion with both prag­matic and cre­ative strate­gies that set a real­is­tic agenda for change guided by local voices. The Studio’s plans have been rec­og­nized with state and national awards and have received both local and national media cov­er­age through the Philadel­phia Weekly, Philadel­phia Inquirer, Plan Philly, Salon Mag­a­zine and Planetizen.

Why were you inter­ested in par­tic­i­pat­ing in The Putting Lot? Does it relate to work you’ve done in the past?

After includ­ing rec­om­men­da­tions in nearly every project regard­ing the cre­ative tem­po­rary reuse of vacant lots, we were very excited by the chance to par­tic­i­pate in the actual trans­for­ma­tion of one. We also wel­comed the oppor­tu­nity to be tem­porar­ily pulled away from our map-making and other assorted com­put­er­ing to roll up our sleeves and get our hands dirty con­struct­ing bird houses, mod­u­lar native grass tiles, “chia cube gabions,” and other mis­cel­la­neous ele­ments. As a stu­dio with inter­est and expe­ri­ence in cre­ative arts beyond the scope of our typ­i­cal endeav­ors as an urban plan­ning and design firm, Inter­face likes to get crafty with its ideas every now and then.

What is the inspi­ra­tion for your design? How does it relate to urban sustainability?

The con­cep­tual intent of our pro­posal, The Liv­ing Lot, is to trans­form a por­tion of the Putting Lot into a hybrid land­scape merg­ing mate­r­ial ele­ments typ­i­cally found in gritty indus­trial dis­tricts with a wilder, more nat­ural habi­tat. In addi­tion to pro­vid­ing a chal­leng­ing and infor­ma­tive course for human vis­i­tors, the course design intends to attract a wilder range of vis­i­tors: small mam­mals, birds, but­ter­flies, and other urban wildlife. The con­cept also intends to use this course as a cat­alytic oppor­tu­nity to breathe life into other vacant lots and slack spaces in the imme­di­ate neigh­bor­hood and beyond through the use of guerilla gar­den­ing tac­tics. Our pro­posal included the sug­ges­tion that we be assigned the ninth hole in the course; upon com­plet­ing the hole, patrons will exchange their golf balls for seed bombs (through the use of some yet-to-be-conceived-of con­trap­tion which we have lov­ingly named “DA BOMB!”), which they are free to throw any­where they’d like to see a small patch of native wild­flow­ers and grasses sprout up in a few weeks.

Instead of a grass “green” putting sur­face (which would likely be dif­fi­cult to main­tain under high foot traf­fic) or an Astro­turf “green” (which would likely be man­u­fac­tured using chem­i­cals and processes harm­ful to the envi­ron­ment and would have very lit­tle use value when the Putting Lot is decon­structed) the Liv­ing Lot fea­tures a burlap fab­ric “green.” “No-mow” grass, which requires very lit­tle water and does not require mow­ing (obvi­ously), will be used to cre­ate the “rough” areas along the edges of the intended putting route. This grass will be grown in advance on mod­u­lar tiles made of re-purposed card­board egg crates and trans­ported to the site for installation.

Repur­posed cyclone fenc­ing will pro­vide the struc­tural integrity for a series of “chia cube gabions.” The gabions cre­ate a grow­ing sur­face for native grasses, as well as a super­fi­cial base for ver­ti­cal sup­ports for bird­houses and hum­ming­bird feed­ers made out of recy­cled mate­ri­als and found objects. Recy­cled mate­r­ial will also con­sti­tute gabion cores, pro­vid­ing them with enough weight to ensure sta­bil­ity. Dis­carded car tires echo­ing the visual lan­guage of the Putting Lot’s neigh­bor­hood con­text will be filled with “paper­crete” (d.i.y. green con­crete) to pro­vide base sup­port for wild­flower planters and addi­tional ver­ti­cal sup­ports for aer­ial habi­tats. In the spirit of the “leave no trace” con­cept, the use of chia cube gabions and tire planters allows for eas­ily decon­structed ver­ti­cal struc­tures with­out dis­turb­ing the site.

The course will also be punc­tu­ated with a series of coffee-can sized holes con­sti­tut­ing an addi­tional haz­ard for Putting Lot patrons. If a player’s ball falls into one of these “pit­falls,” they will be penal­ized an extra stroke. The “pit­falls” are also an oppor­tu­nity to increase aware­ness and/or incite inter­est in var­i­ous top­ics of sus­tain­abil­ity: each hole will be accom­pa­nied by a small plac­ard fea­tur­ing a sur­pris­ing green fact.

All plant­i­ngs, as well as the seeds in the seed bombs, will con­sist of New York native flow­er­ing plants and grasses includ­ing Black Eyed Susan, Joe Pye Weed, Scented Gold­en­rod, Par­tridge Pea, But­ter­fly Milk­weed, Switch Grass, and Lit­tle Blue Stem. These plants will cre­ate a xeriscape: a native plant­ing scheme spe­cific to New York’s cli­mate requir­ing very lit­tle watering.

What else would you like to see in an empty space in the city?

We’d like to see empty lots hav­ing uses beyond being land­fills. Empty space as putting lots, empty space as orga­niz­ing tech­niques, empty space as grounds for fos­ter­ing inter­ac­tion and incu­bat­ing ideas.

Do you have any child­hood mem­o­ries or good sto­ries about minia­ture golf?

Although Leah and Ash­ley grew up play­ing minia­ture golf 1,600 miles away from each other, never hav­ing the oppor­tu­nity to face off on the Astro­turf bat­tle­field, Ash­ley is con­fi­dent that she would “beat Leah’s butt on the putt.” Leah claims Ash­ley “could never pro­voke a lower stroke than her own score, for shore.” Thank­fully, the open­ing of the Putting Lot promises to resolve this esca­lat­ing intra-Interface Stu­dio intimidation.

What do you hope to see at The Putting Lot this summer?

In addi­tion to scores of putt putt patrons, we hope that our hole suc­cess­fully attracts local wildlife and helps to hybridize the gritty hard­scape with nat­ural habi­tats. And we hope there will be pud­ding pops.