Ben Roo­sevelt has exhib­ited in the United States and inter­na­tion­ally, includ­ing the 2007 Atlanta Bien­nial, the show Rigor Mort in Dun­dalk, Ire­land, and House Projects, a series of projects across Lon­don, Ire­land, and New York City. Roosevelt’s work has been sup­ported by the Arts Coun­cil of Ire­land, the Atlanta Con­tem­po­rary Arts Cen­ter, and the For­ward Arts Foun­da­tion of Atlanta. His work has been reviewed in Circa, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and The Irish Times.

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

As a kid in the ‘80s, I spent a lot of time in sur­real fam­ily envi­ron­ments like the Chucky Cheese restau­rants, Dis­ney World, and minia­ture golf courses. The Putting Lot project caught my atten­tion because it offers a great chance to design a hole for a course in an unusual place. I love the idea of using a mini-golf for­mat (which is a part of sprawl in many places) to address issues of sus­tain­abil­ity in a tran­si­tional neigh­bor­hood in Brooklyn.

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

To cre­ate my design, we pho­tographed the exact area of the vacant lot where my hole would be built, prior to any clean­ing or build­ing. Then the pho­tographs were used to make an out­door, high-traffic decal for the actual play­ing sur­face of the hole. A player can look down and see what was in the exact spot before the hole was built: trash, debris, rocks, etc.

I think of this image as a “ghost” of the vacant lot applied to the sur­face of the com­pleted design. In folk­lore, ghosts are sup­pos­edly observed fol­low­ing hall­ways in build­ings that no longer exist, so that they may bestand­ing on the spot of the floor two feet below the cur­rent floor of a place, for exam­ple. Sim­i­larly, I want to reveal the ghost of the site prior to build­ing a minia­ture golf hole. The play­ing sur­face of my hole is meant to present a past land­scape of this exact spot to the player.

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

Some of the things I would like to see include gar­dens, bazaars, cis­terns, and forests.

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

When I was three years old, I was attacked by fire ants at a minia­ture golf course. My par­ents looked over and saw me stomp­ing my feet and jump­ing around howling.

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

Locals.