I formed an opinion about outdoor food vendors before the advent of food trucks: meat is not something best prepared au plein air. (This opinion died while living in Los Angeles, where delicious food trucks are parked all over the place) Now, if we could only get food trucks to look less like creepy ice cream vans.
The Rural Studio has nothing to do with food trucks in Los Angeles, but while looking through their website I came across an excellent project that reminded me of Kogi, Coolhaus, and the Grilled Cheese Truck. Mobile Concessions is one in a series of projects for Lions Park in Greensboro, Alabama realized by Rural Studio. A part of Auburn University’s School of Architecture, the studio has been transforming the park for the past half decade adding a skate park (Tony Hawk paid for the concrete), an amazing entry gate, a series of toilets, and other features.
The humor of Mobile Concessions– eating food from of a giant mouth– is simple. But it’s not just a joke, the mouth of the concession stand shuts when games are over to keep folks from stealing candy and hot dogs. And the Studio’s larger involvement with the park has drastically changed the character of the park along with the public’s attitude toward the once-declining public space. The director of the Rural Studio, Andrew Freear says “I think it’s the most important project we’ve ever done,” when asked about Lions Park, and it is undoubtedly the largest project the studio has undertaken.
Alex
