On a hot and breezy Saturday evening, ResLab participants gathered for our first in-person workshop at Mary Soo Hoo Park, featuring guest facilitator ponnapa prakkamakul, a Boston-area Chinese-Thai American landscape architect and a 2019 ResLab artist. Located at the foot of the Chinatown Gate entrance, Mary Soo Hoo Park will be the most public-facing site to date to host a ResLab activation. 

Ponnapa guided ResLab participants through a series of exercises that demonstrate how weather, wind, rain, and heat all affect space usage, and how park-goers find creative and unconventional ways to engage with the park equipment. For example, to prevent the wind from blowing away their paper chess boards, the elders used pebbles surrounding the trees to secure their game.

Caption: ponnapa prakkamakul helped the cohort take note of shadows caused by the vent stack, the looming trees that provided shade from the sun and rain, and the picnic tables bolted down to the concrete. We looked to where the park was less utilized and by whom, where spaces had been fenced off and lacked benches.

Image Description: ResLab participants at Mary Soo Hoo Park gathering around to listen to guest facilitator Ponnappa Prakkamakul, who stands in the center holding a printed photo of a banner over a fence. Photo Credit: Qing Qing Pan.

Image description: ResLab workshop facilitator ponnapa prakkamakul’s clipboard, includes printed map of Mary Soo Hoo Park covered in brightly-colored sticky note drawings and observations. Photo Credit: Qing Qing Pan

The in-person workshop featured a lot of “side conversations,” as teams began to develop their design ideas. Brian, Clare, and Itasha’s team talked about enlivening the space with a summer night dance party while Yuko, Kathy, Amy, and Elaine emphasized the importance of promoting awareness about air pollution.

Image description: ResLab artist and resident participants sit and write at an outdoors table, the surface covered in papers, highlighters, and sticky notes Photo Credit: Qing Qing Pan.

Image description: ResLab participant, Yuko kneels down to draw a yellow dragonfly on the ground with chalk. They are surrounded by other colorful chalk drawings, including koi fish, lotus leaves, and pineapples. Photo Credit: Qing Qing Pan.