About Pallet City

Artists: Katherine Gressel and Jeremy Reed

Pallet City
was an interactive public art project made almost entirely from recycled shipping pallets. Pallet City juxtaposes different common uses of the pallet as an art/building material, and invites participation and feedback, simultaneously raising questions about practicality and aesthetics of pallet use. The city's fluid, linear forms and signage imply different actions that take place within the urban environment: sit (implied by a bench); park (a bike rack); dwell (a shelter); plant (a planter with small garden, which visitors can help water); perform (a stage where visitors can mount and document spontaneous performances); observe (seats accompanying the theater); exhibit (a gallery space with 2-3 different exhibits that the artists will curate during the summer, and a shelf where visitors can curate their own exhibits); play (a playful rolling wave), and learn (an ‘information kiosk’ at one end). Pallet City thus describes the city in terms of active, democratic use rather than passive viewing or restricted areas. The project was meant to spark public dialogue on the notion of city itself and the creation of democratic, sustainable cities. Pallet City was designed for the FIGMENT Terrace season-long sculpture garden on Governors Island in summer 2010.

Pallet City was open to the public at all times Governors Island was open to the public, Friday-Sunday, June 5-October 3, 2010. Please visit the official Governors Island page for directions to the island.

This blog documents the development of the project, and the public's experiences with it.

Saturday, June 12, 2010

What is a shipping pallet?

  • The purpose of a shipping pallet (sometimes called a “skid”) is to greatly facilitate the stable movement of goods with transport devices like forklifts, pallet jacks, or front loaders.
  • In 1931, it took three days to unload a boxcar containing 13,000 cases of unpalletized canned goods. When the same amount of goods was loaded into the railway trucks on pallets, this took only four hours.
  • The common shipping pallet was first patented by Howard T. Hallowell in 1924 as a "Lift Truck Platform.” Its invention was precipitated by the development of the modern fork lift truck around the same time.
  • There is currently no international uniform measurement for a shipping pallet, because of variations in things like factory door size, but the standard North American size is 40” X 48”.

Source: www.wikipedia.org

No comments:

Post a Comment